Shaking off loneliness
Is being lonely really worse for your health than smoking? Oh dear...
I’ve been re-reading one of my favourite books, I’m sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come by Jessica Pan. This is the story of an introverted woman who breaks out of her comfort zone by taking up more extrovert activities e.g. public speaking, improvisation classes, stand-up comedy, going on friendship dates, and solo travel. It makes me laugh with funny anecdotes about how awkward it can feel to go against your natural instinct to stay quiet and in familiar territory. I relate.
One of many things I love about this book is how it explores the complexities of introversion. Introverts are known to require time alone to process thoughts, but they also need people, deep connection and conversation with others to thrive. Sometimes I want to shout this from the rooftops: Introverts do get lonely!
Jessica Pan writes very well about loneliness. In her thirties, she finds herself without friends who live close and sets out to make new ones. She quotes research from a survey of 1,500 people that finds we typically have the highest number of friends when we are aged 29. As we get older, life takes us in many different directions that can test friendships.
I can’t remember being wildly popular in my 20s, but my life certainly looked different then. I was living with my long-term partner for that decade and married aged 27. A lot of socialising in that time happened with little effort from me; barbeques or Sunday Lunch at the in-laws, drinks with work colleagues, friends from university over for dinner. Yet it’s telling that when I am nostalgic for that time, what I long for is cosy nights curled up together with our cat on the sofa, watching a boxset of 24 accompanied by a bottle of wine and pizza. Company, acceptance and stability.
Friendships in your 30s get fragmented by marriage and kids. Despite being earlier than many peers to marriage, I was also early to divorce at 32. This was the first age when I lived on my own and wow, that was a huge change. Nothing around me seemed to make sense. Why was it that I lived in Surrey, an epic 4 hour drive from where I grew up in the Midlands? My parents and sister still lived up there and were the only people now obligated to hang out with me. But I needed to stay put for work. And I was rubbish at team sports. What was I supposed to do now?
I mastered living alone by trial and error. And eventually I realised that it has a lot of good points; you get complete control of your environment (music, tv, silence, whether or not you have a magenta kitchen ), you are free to come and go, to cook or not cook, to sleep and wake up when you decide. But there have been times, even when I’ve been in a relationship, when loneliness threatened to engulf me.
This is how Jessica Pan writes about a period of loneliness:
After work, I’d come home, eat dinner alone and then go to bed…I wasn’t suicidal. I’ve never self-harmed. I was still going to work, eating food, getting through the day. There are a lot of people who have felt far worse. But still, I was inside my own head all day, every day, and I went days without feeling like a single interaction made me feel seen or understood. There were moments when I felt this darkness, this stillness from being so totally alone, descend. It was a feeling that I didn’t know how to shake. (p. 221, from I’m sorry I’m late I didn’t want to come)
I recognise the feeling described here creeping up on me at certain times. When I go to bed at night, I’ll lie in the dark and feel the little pang of wishing I could talk to someone. There is often a sense of incompletion to my day. Another time it looms is when asked about my weekend plans. Always having to make plans is tiring. It’s great if I have a museum or theatre trip, an exercise class and a lunch lined up. But I don’t like to schedule events all the time. I enjoy a bit of spontaneity, like being able to go for a drink after a frustrating day or head to the park because it’s sunny. Choosing things according to my mood or energy levels. But this way of being must be adapted, as friends need to be booked in advance. And I don’t always manage, suddenly realising I’ve got an empty weekend ahead.
The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertz includes all the scary research about loneliness, including that ubiquitous stat that being lonely is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The book argues that many political and social factors led to the current levels of loneliness many of us experience. Solutions need to focus on bringing communities together and providing spaces for us to meet. I think it also helps to talk about this feeling that happens to the best of us, through unavoidable circumstances. There is no shame in having lonely moments.
Our phones and social media are go-to distractions offering us a way to connect with others, but on so many levels they can’t deliver. Listening to the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast this week on the importance of touch in our lives, I can’t see how technology is going to solve this problem. Devices just aren’t people and it only takes a hug from a friend to remind us of that. So it’s out into the world we must go.
I’ve made good progress on my own adventures lately. Yesterday I spent the day at a networking event where I gave a talk and awarded fake money as a dragon in a pastiche of Dragon’s Den. We raised real money for The Mentoring Lab, a youth organisation based in Hackney. I got to meet brilliant people from different backgrounds - MBA students/alumni, entrepreneurs, volunteers and teenagers. I’ve also been connecting with potential friends through other networks and interest groups. A work colleague sent kind words and a gift by post. I’m proactively sharing more and recently spoke on a podcast about divorce, which is coming out soon. I feel a familiar sense of cringing awkwardness about whatever I said, but I reckon it might help someone out there. Maybe it will even bring more connection back to me.