All the Lonely People

I recently went to a conference where a doctor who works with addicts in the slums of Vancouver (yes, we have them) spoke about the God-shaped void that causes people to get addicted. That's caused by a loneliness that they can't find any solution for but to drink, use drugs, or seek easy sex. What they seem to need is a great, huge deal of love. Yet because of their past abuse and pain, it is something they are unable to find.

In my work as a peer supporter of people with depression, I've found my deepest connection with people is in their time of pain. When you can be together with a person who is in tears and truly feel compassion for that person, and enter into their pain, a closeness develops that is very hard to come by when everything is fine. It is also in a person's deepest pain that he sometimes will come to understand the love of God better than he could otherwise - and to receive a spiritual connection unlike any other. If only all lonely people could find someone with whom to develop such a connection. If there were only more people who could truly feel compassion.

I've probably gone way off topic, but your post led to this. And I'm feeling for a friend who presently is in hospital, feeling very abandoned and lonely. And I think the only way to help her is to join her - to enter into her pain....and then to turn her over to God's care.

Hope I didn't get to religious here. But spirituality is a huge component of our emotional well being and I needed to include it.

I think is the name of that song.

In truth? I have never felt not alone, wherever I am. Except for a few people in my life. You've defined loneliness perfectly. I can't define the "it" where it breaks with those few people, others may be able, I just know it from the way I feel inside in their company. Feeling lonely vanishes and there is a gladdening of the spirit when they're around.

Yes, in the comfort and ease of those silent periods, felt with so very few. It is the true gauge of friendship for me.

To me, loneliness is the absence of feeling, which you've already covered.

What a beautiful piece of writing and insight, explanation. You know your subject well. Thank you.

Loneliness is always there waiting for my weaker moments.  When I'm feeling the strength of my independence, loneliness can't get at me.  When I'm generally melting down emotionally, loneliness is one of the beasts that comes. I'm usually okay with being alone, I crave it as a matter of fact.  But when I'm in a generally weakened condition, I'm susceptible.

I spent Christmas of 2006 alone.  That loneliness got right on me.  Got on me quick and hard.  There was just something unnatural about being alone on Christmas - I'd always been lucky enough to be around others on all other Christmases. Some plans fell through, and travel was not really feasible.

I don't know.  I guess it can hit you any time:  ready or not.  I've felt so lonely sometimes I would just walk out and talk to the first person I see, you know?   Say anything to them.  They'd either say something back or treat me like a weirdo.  Whatever.  Even the weirdo treatment is some kind of human interaction I guess.

Hard to say exactly what IT is,  we call it love mostly.  And loneliness comes in two types because of IT.

There is the loneliness without IT.  You speak of it so well.  Its the disconnect, but even worse,  no one to connect with even when you know connection is possible someplace inside.

Then there is the loneliness with IT. You speak of IT too.  And if You have shared IT and you are separated for IT,  loneliness becomes longingness as well.  Thank God for IT.  And I do not know which causes the most pain...

A winter pause

I see the distance

from this height

down across the snowy field

to the woods trailed creek

and up the further hill,

off as far as my eye

can take me

and then farther still

to you

times I would like

for you to see

with me

these simple beautiful scenes

for I see them

a bit empty now

like that feeling

when you kiss bye

the dead, a feeling

of things unsaid

now unsayable

And yet it is of choice,

not even a sincere barrier,

built beyond hope but just beyond,

just beyond the day

beyond those colored rays

where the last stars

will finally shine

and end that day

of yours and

and this of mine

I think you've got something here.  Alone and lonely are different.  I too like my alone time but I do not like to feel lonely.  Now that I'm married I find that I don't feel lonely very often.  When and if my husband is gone I miss him most at night.  Then I feel a little lonely.

I also agree that you can be right next to someone and be chatting and still feel depressed or cut off.  When I'm down this happens to me a lot.

I completely agree with the silent friend portion. I've always found the best kind of friend when your lonely is one willing to just sit quietly reading next to you, and feel contented with your mere presence and not need anything more. The talkative kind never seem to get through.

Know first that I am bipolar and experience depressions of terrific magnitude.  I can only have a feeling of loneliness when I'm healthy enough to actually miss people.  When I'm sick I can't imagine anyone wanting to be around me, though I force myself from long discipline to interact.

What I'm saying is that in clinical depression there is a loneliness far beyond loneliness, an absolute isolatioin, the bell jar of Plath, where no light can escape, like a black hole.  In this condition it is silly to speak of loneliness since no amount of company and compassion can connect.  One does not feel lonely so much as inhuman, alien, insentient.

And regarding one comment, I find little spiritual comfort in interacting with a clinically depressed person; it's like pushing string, and I leave exhausted and fearful for my own mood disorder, though I don't stop visiting.

In other words, in a state beyond loneliness, call it complete disconnection, why even leave a suicide note?  Who could possibly care? 

In my experience, the ability to feel loneliness is a step up from the depths of depression.

Here's a poem about dealing with the state I consider beneath loneliness, "self-abandonment" if you will:

For the Record

I am myself, even in the dark

without mirrors or clues.

I may be as inconsequential

as the point of a fading penlight

but I am not this feeling

of being buried alive.

If I fall through the ice

I am not my hypothermia.

I am not my heart's vacuum's

cruel absence of presence.

There are times this seems specious,

as if I were a Jesuit preaching in a sewer,

hoping echoes could convince me--

but all I have is this distinction.

I hold it in a cup like Christ's blood

as I fall through infinite separations.

I am still here.

I write this for the record.

Good job, btw, on most forms of loneliness, Merelyme.

CE

Lonliness is it's own abyss, even for those without mood disorders.  I am a former Psychologist and have sufered many bouts of severe depression through the years. I finally was able to get effective treatment.  I remember the absolute feeling of utter despair and the unique kind of lonliness that is part of true biological, clinical depression. I believe that it  takes someone who has gone through it personally to truly understand that kind of lonliness.  These well-meaning people who say "simply snap out of it, or "I don't have the time to get depressed" dont know what the Hell they are talking about. I really do know how you feel.

Jim

I feel lonely when I have no one (in the non-virtual world )to share moments of joy with. I haven't found a cure and I don't know there is one but listening to or playing music is a treatment, as is word-making, especially social wordiness like blogging and penpals. And this column! *smiley icon*

I am running out door but decided to read your post.  Such a good thing I did.  I'm about to pick up someone who has just done everything you described a lonely, depressed person does...culminating in creating a situation where she brings on the world's negative reaction confirming her own assessment of herself.  I wasn't sure how I was going to handle it today!  Now, I know.  Thank you, writer girl!!

CE certainly hit the nail on the head when describing the loneliness beyond loneliness.  I think this is where I have lived most of my life.  It is my own place that no one is ever allowed into - even my wife.  In many ways, I feel as if I have taken her best years and given her back less than she deserves.  Despite her love, I still have the deep, dark lonely place that I retreat to in times of great depression. 

However, her love and my love for my son has greatly reduced my dark times. I wonder if some people are just meant to live their lives with loneliness.  I know it has helped me understand other people's pain. 

Thanks for the excellent descriptions Merely Me and CE.  This post was definately thought provoking.

Curt

Music has played a large part in getting me through a 10-year journey through cancer and depression.  Now I am in a somewhat better place and talk about these events anf feelings rather than experience them.  But every so often when I hear a certain song on the radio or iTune, such as REM's "Automatic for the People" I go back to the place I was in, across the country and on my own.  I revisit that place with interest, momentarily experiencing the ache again, but then moving back to where I am.  I feel grateful and accomplished that I've come this far.

As my self-knowing has improved with exeprience and yes, therapy and medication, I can look back and index my life with the music I hear. It reminds me it's not so bad anymore.

The "sad song says so much" about where I was and now about how far I've come.

BT

"Sometimes being alone is the best way to be, when I'm by myself nobody else can say....goodbye.....

Lonliness for me is to feel uncomfortable about doing something and having all those whom you felt loved you, get angry because you feel that way.   I am in that situation right now.  I have moved 4 hours away from my daughters and my grandchildren and I do not like to make the drive by myself.  Yet everyone feels I am being a big baby because I don't like to drive from here to there by myself.  I am 56 yrs. old and  I am concerned about my own safety on the roads along with the fact, my husband has put a lot of milage on the car we had before we moved here and then I have also made a few trips home to pick up and drop off grandchildren and friends that have come for the summer. About 2 and a half hours into the trip I my cell phone looses the signal and I am in what you call a dead zone.  I know it is hard on one of my dauhgters to come here, but the other one can pick up and go to a city that is just as far as the city I am in, but cannot come here..She prefers I come there.  I want to see my babies, I am just getting to the point where the trip is hard on me.  I also have a blood clot in my right leg, the leg I use to drive and the Dr. said I can drive for an hour , but then I have to get out and walk for 30 minutes.  So this doesn't remain a 4 hour trip, it becomes a 7-8 hr. trip instead.

When the ones you love and are suppose to love you do not understand why you don't want to do something and get angry at you for it, it is like they don't understand and they really don't love you and to me this is lonliness.  Also my husband comes home from work, goes to the bedroom to watch TV.  He eats in there, sleeps in there, gets on his computer in there, and on and on.  I never see him at all, but right now I am happy to be in this house, and not on the open road..Why is that so hard to understand?

Are you sure the song "All The Lonely People" isn't by Crosby Stills & Nash? Maybe theirs is called "This Is For All The Lonely People".  I have also heard that most of the songs by The Statler Brothers are about loneliness. The song "Class Of '57" is designed to make the listener feel nostalgic.  I can remember when the song 'I Go To Pieces" by Peter Gorden was on the charts, I was only 3 or so, but I remember it making me feel kind of like dreading being alone.

JRB