A Lesson On Loneliness

I was really trying to come up with a better topic for this week’s post. I felt like I should counter last week’s honesty with something less dismal. But a few days ago, when I was walking around Bushwick, Stu Larsen's song “King Street” started to play. I was compelled to really listen to the lyrics, despite the surrounding distractions. Suddenly, I could feel myself connecting to the lyrics.

For those of you who likely haven’t heard the song, they go something like this: 

“There’s a man begging down on King Street and he grabs me by the wrist. He says ‘Son, you know what the biggest killer in this world is? It’s not money, not drugs, not guns.. he said it’s loneliness.. and it’s killing me.. oh this loneliness, it’s bringing me down. ”

I immediately knew it was a sign. Even if I wanted to share a recipe or talk about some great adventure, there was no way I could focus on something else. I needed to write about this. So, here we go:  

Recently, I’ve spent an incredible amount of time alone. I don’t mean the “hey I need a break from people” type of space. Rather, there are days where I don’t speak more than five words to someone and it’s typically a coffee order. As someone who can never stop talking (which I’m sure all of my friends would agree to), it is excruciatingly painful. I’m a writer. I want people to read what I have to say. I want them to listen to me. 

Over the past week I've noticed a pattern in my feelings. I hate that I don’t know anyone in my neighborhood. I hate that my friends are not around the corner. I hate that I don’t have a job with coworkers and a set workload. But mostly, I hate that feeling of loneliness that seems to follow me around. 

To be fair, I can see the benefit of spending so much time by myself.

I redeveloped my love of reading. As a kid, I spent all of my free time reading. I would always bring a book along when my family went to dinner or the movies. If there was anything I loved more than talking, it was reading.

I’ve also discovered the passions I want to rebuild. As a child I consistently wrote stories. I can’t say my pieces were necessarily original. I would read “Little House on the Prairie” books and then compose a piece about a family of nine daughters living on the prairie. Occasionally, I would input my own ideas, like naming each daughter after a misspelled state or adding a dead mom (I blame Disney for making me think the Mom had to always be dead in stories, especially when I have such a fantastic Mom). But as I grew up, the works became more original. I would anxiously wait for the end of a school day when I could input the newest dialogue to my story. I believed I would be an author one day. But somewhere along the way, I lost my love my belief in this dream and in turn my passion for writing stories. I did find a great outlet for my writing in both journalism and blogging. But I want to return to the other part of writing that I always loved: inputting my imagination.

It's actually incredible that I have the free time to pursue these different possibilities with my time, to return to all of the little things I’ve lost over the years between schoolwork, jobs and laziness. At first, this free time made me feel inevitably lost. But I honestly believe I’m starting to take advantage of the endless hours I spend alone. 

This sense of accomplishment and discovery reminds me of a Rupi Kaur poem that simply states, “Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.”  

But I won’t lie. As much as I’ve gained from spending time alone, it is also dreadful.

In contrast to Kaur, I think that I might spend too much time with myself. At first, I found my ideas interesting. But, I’m quickly learning how easy it is to irrationally annoy myself. I started to hate my own ideas and the fact that many of my thoughts go unchallenged.

Part of this is because I love arguing. I don’t mean an attack-another-person-through-a-screaming-match type of arguing. Rather, a discussion where you learn something new or become attuned to an alternative viewpoint. There’s nothing more powerful than having a debate with someone offering an opposing idea. It forces us to not only interrogate their viewpoints, but question our own.  

But a bigger part of this is that I spend so much time with myself and it forces me to recognize that my loneliness equates to my sadness. Loneliness is sitting on your couch on a Sunday when you know other people are with friends but you don’t have anyone around. It’s accepting that you no longer having all of your best friends under one roof, or just minutes away down the street. It's walking to the park to read because you can't stand to spend another minute in your apartment without the sound of another human voice. 

And don't worry guys, I'm not fooled that this is some *~ incredible~* revelation about loneliness. Rather, I didn't realize the prominent role this feeling would play in post-grad life. Every single friend I talked to about my feelings could relate to the subject on some level. It’s difficult to lose a tight-knit community all around you. It’s difficult to switch to 40-hour workweek with limited free time to spend with anyone else. It’s difficult to have your friends spread out across the world, rather than compacted to one little college town. And it’s also scary. It's scary to be in this next stage of life, often in a brand new city, where you know less than .000005 percent of the entire population. It's scary to accept the role that loneliness plays in your life now.

This loneliness is what leads me to spend endless hours in a coffee shop just to be around people. It’s part of the reason I job search so avidly in hopes of finding coworkers who share my interests and passions. It’s the reason I woke up on Friday at 2:30 a.m. with a huge pit in my stomach, and the only thing I could do was cry. 

Life is forcing me to acknowledge the loneliness of not just moving to a big city, but of growing up.  And the worst part might be that there isn’t a set end date to these feelings. You won’t return to school at the end of summer to all of your friends. You won’t leave study abroad in a new city and go back home to your family. The only real way to end these feelings is by actively putting yourself out there and making an effort to connect as consistently as possible to people.

And while I may have spent Friday night unable to sleep, I countered that by filling my time on Saturday and Sunday trying to connect with people. I went out to dinner with Blair like we were back in school, back in Chicago. The food was bizarre and the drinks were subpar, but we still had so much fun. And the next day I ventured all the way out to Hoboken, New Jersey (an hour commute from Brooklyn) to spend the day with Megan. We watched football as part of “Sunday Funday” and then spent hours just talking about life. 

As cheesy as it sounds, it turned out to be the medicine I needed for the time being. But it was also an eye opener to allow myself to actually discuss these feelings with other people. To realize that my loneliness was just another difficult part of this post-grad transition and in fact wasn't my own at all.  

So guys here's the summary: Unfortunately things are lonely out here in the real world, and sometimes there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. But know that it is normal and don't hesitate to reach out if you ever feel like you need a friend.