In Bad Company
When is it okay to admit you’re lonely?
“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.”
Jean-Paul Satre
I had this written on the wall of my halls of residence 14 years ago. (Cut me some slack? I was on an acting course and very serious about it all).
I held it as gospel, a commandment. Thou shalt not be lonely!
I obeyed because I genuinely believed it to be true, and I made it my mission to be my own best company. (Why I felt it necessary to seek comfort in solitude at such drastic levels, I’ll never know. Or maybe I do, but I can’t be bothered to do the work right now. Another time?)
Anyhow, I guess it worked.
I loved being alone, never felt there was a void needed filling. I didn’t need days and nights filled with socials and pub crawls and questionable choices. I wasn’t the girl fighting with her boyfriend outside the Student’s Union. Quite frankly, I felt superior to all my friends because I didn’t need a boyfriend. I was perfectly fine by myself. How smug I was to know that I could never be lonely because I just loved being alone.
God, I was a w*nker.
There’s much I could say about my slightly ridiculous brush with existentialism, (later full on breakdown), but I can’t quite bring myself to look that young girl in the eye. I felt ashamed for a long time in my twenties, for needing so desperately to be taken seriously, to be a deep thinker, to understand the meaning of it all. To let myself become so deeply consumed by made up words of long dead philosophers, that I couldn’t break the surface and breathe in all the other feelings and experiences a young woman should have. I used solitude as proof that I was enough, even better than, when really, it was the foundation I used to build walls that have taken over a decade to knock down.
Two things are still true:
I am alone.
I love being alone.
I’m now 32. I’ve been single most of my adult life. I have a dog, Ani, (stupid, stubborn, love of my life). I have deep, wonderful friendships. I am whole. I am grateful. Sometimes I’m lonely.
I spent a decade running away from loneliness as though it were some infectious disease, now, whether I like it or not, it has become a more frequent companion. Like the fog that rolls in off the mountains, it sets low into the village and lurks outside my window, and I never know how long it’s going to stay.
Its amorphous presence is difficult to negotiate. Is it really a problem, or is it just passing by? Is it a reaction to someone else’s apparent abundance or truly a reflection of how I feel? It’s loneliness, sure, but it’s also something else. Sadness that I live so far away from friends. Frustration at their relationships and families that keep them so busy. Guilt that I expect them to make time for me in their hectic lives. Worry that I’m not where a 32 year old should be. Confusion about what I want. Knowing what I don’t want. Shame that I’ve let myself need something I don’t have. Longing for something I don’t even know what it is.
Hope that people think of me as much as I think of them. Hope that I might find someone I want to spend time with. Hope that this feeling is fleeting. Knowing the skies will clear and all will feel lighter again. Understanding that it will be back. Accepting all of it.
I no longer run away when I see the fog approaching, though it’s hard not to feel as as though everyone else is running away from me. I know, everyone else is running around their work, children, partners, parents… normal grown up things. We live our busy, contradictory, isolated lives and wonder why it’s difficult to make time for our friends. We feel lacking in companionship and intimacy, while not wanting to leave the house or make plans because that feels a little too ambitious.
Maybe everything inevitably gets harder in your 30s? It’s natural for relationships to stumble a little, we arrive at a pass and we must decide whether or not we’ve reached the pinnacle of our friendships, or whether we can bend and stretch ourselves to fit the around the people we are today. Not the people we were fifteen years ago.
When it matters, we bend.
Though I may not subscribe to stupid philosophical ideology anymore (philosophers are just messy people trying to work out their shit as well, y’know?), I still feel largely attuned to the idea that if I’m going to be alone then I may as well be the best company I can be. But unlike Sartre, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to let the loneliness creep in at times. It can help to show us what it is we really want. And for me, that usually means a lot of what I already have; meaningful friendships, work, long dog walks, and an understanding that I might never know if I’m doing it right.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up and it might be there again. Ani will jump onto my side of the bed and fall back asleep in the nook of my arm. She’ll never know how much her weight and warmth suppresses the rising mist. How much I love our foggy walks.
If you made it this far, thank you. I’m not sure I have the answers to navigating a solitary life, but I feel an urgent need to write and learn and make sense of it. And I’d love to read more words from writers on the same page. Please let me know your suggestions.