loneliness by talkinbot deviant art

For my post today I have taken a copy of my comment from Dr. Niamh Clune’s post “Are We Lonely?” to use in my post “Loneliness?” in order to discuss further on this topic. When I finished writng my response on her post (which is posted below this statement,) I had more thoughts and feelings come up. Plus my partner questioned whether I was not understanding what Loneliness is and would I recognise it if I felt it inside of myself or saw it in someone else. A good question which I want to examine further in my post and to also discuss with my therapist. I truly do not know for sure that I feel loneliness or that I am lonely. The series on Emotional Fitness (TM) that Dr. Clune is writing on her blog is an amazing series that is helping to uncover different questions in me that I want to understand for myself and to help me understand in other people. To express one’s feelings and thoughts are extremely important to me. And to discover the secrets on how to release my tears, my feelings in a healthy manner has been my Dr. Moriarty my entire life.

the loneliness by camelto-deviant art

I am trying to examine whether I feel loneliness. When I am being creative I become so filled with what I am doing that nothing else seems to enter my mind but the project I am working on. It affects me so much that I do not even remember to eat or go to bed to sleep. When I was a little kid I had a great imagination and could entertain myself with the most unusual things. I was a daydreamer and drifted off into other worlds while the world was doing their boring things.

When I was in High School I was always involved in everything from sports to theatre to music and wrote everything from short stories to poetry and screenplays. I never felt lonely. I felt left out of other people’s lives because I wasn’t really allowed to have friends so I would absorb myself with other things. I enjoyed the company of animals and ran away a lot. I had a special friend I use to run off with which was forbidden by both our parents but they couldn’t stop us from going off together.

confuse fact life loneliness love by favim

I was never a real people person when a child. My music teacher in High School once said that if you are intelligent there is no excuse for you to be bored. I believe she is right and if anything there has never been enough time in my life to be bored. I know I am trying to correlate boredom with loneliness. Don’t you have to have time to be lonely?

I do have issues with abandonment and separation anxiety. That is a problem for me but I don’t think it is related to loneliness. My partner goes to bed early. She is a day person. I am a night person. And somewhere we meet in the middle. At first when she goes off to bed I sometimes feel a twinge of anxiety which comes from my separation anxiety but then I adjust and welcome the time alone so that I can have the freedom to do whatever I want, which is usually writing or creating something while I listen to music. I, also, spend time connecting in some way with other people in multiple ways.

There never is enough time to do all the things I want to do. I am not trying to fill time. There really is not enough time. I have people in my life who are special to me and I like to keep in touch with them on a regular basis. I do have an issue with abandonment and that can get tricky with how my mind processes my reaction to that but I still don’t feel that has to do with loneliness. I know I don’t like it when I get that occasional feeling of being totally alone in the universe but that goes back to my issues with separation anxiety. I like aloneness but I don’t like being alone when I don’t want to be but there are always books to read or films I want to see and tv shows on the dvr that I find I never have time to catch up on watching them.

So what am I missing or not understanding? I think I am debating in my mind what to me is loneliness and whether I really experience that feeling. I do write about my feelings all of the time but the feeling of loneliness has never been something that I have really written about. So maybe I just don’t understand what it is or that I do not feel it because I feel so filled with so many other feelings and thoughts and experiences that I don’t have time to feel lonely. I may be wrong but think my issues lie in plenty of other areas that for once maybe loneliness is not one of my issues or I am just trying to rationalize away a feeling that I do not want to accept as something that somewhere inside me it lives. I will add another thought and that is I miss certain people when we are not able to find time to communicate but I don’t think that has anything to do with loneliness either but instead it is just missing someone I want to be connected to. So I don’t feel that is loneliness either. So what in the debate in my head am I missing that I do not see loneliness as something that affects me?

I am trying to rule out the denial inside of me. My willingness to be open makes me feel that if I felt loneliness I would admit to it. Or is it such a state to be in that one wouldn’t even wnat to admit to themselves that it exists inside of them. I think I need to have a more concrete definition of what loneliness is or what it feels like to understand whether I feel it or whether I experience loneliness. This is important to me. If I felt lonely what would I do about it? Am I detached or isolated? I don’t think so, at least not to the degree there would be loneliness. Actually, I attach to people even though I have an issue with attachment and trust. I go on trusting people. However, I also retreat at some of the slightest of reasons that are usual caused by delusions of circumstances that I distort in my mind. Am I isolated? I am connected in cyberspace but still have contact with humans in the flesh but prefer not to socialize face to face with friends. I do have contact with my partner everyday and with my psyhotherapist twice a week and other professionals. But I do not seek out other connections intentionally. This may sound lonely but I have our animals that satisfy needs for physical contact.

I use to be a wild child and lived on the edge of a very dangerous life. Partying, drugs, alcohol and other assorted entertainments. I was extremely involved in college. Headed up the college newspaper. Joined the philosophy club. Had an active social life but hated parties but went to them anyway. I travelled. I went to Broadway Shows and music concerts. I loved bar hopping to gay bars more for the dancing then drinking or socializing. But I was on the Board of the Women’s Center in New Haven, CT and co-produced a gay radio show at Yale. I belonged to Rap Groups back then where we would talk about different issues and then end up at the bar afterwards to talk, drink, smoke pot and dance. I enjoyed all this but gave it up after I met my partner. Then I slipped away from all of this and we even moved back to the town where she went to college and have lived there ever since.

I don’t need that crazy life. I made friends here but something happened in my life here that caused me to retreat and become reclusive. It is something of the life of having a room of one’s own. I get to write any time I want. Go online and have friendships with people all over the world. Once a friend that I talk to on the phone and have known the longest in my life told me that connecting to people in cyberspace was not real. I argued with him that some of those relationships are more real than with some of the people I have known far longer and that includes some members of my family. I have continued contact with special friends over the internet which mean more to me than any others I have ever had in my life.

And now I am writing a blog and for the last five months I have only missed a few days when I didn’t post at least one or more posts a day. Several being reblogs. I love blogging. Wrting and creating my own and reading and investigating other bloggers out there. It is an amazing world. I’ve also gotten into the world of publishing in a way that is manageable for me. I’ve met many talented writers, poets, musicians, bloggers, painters, artists of all kinds. Now I am in a different world. One in which I find to be extremely enlightening and supportive and friendly.

green planet surreal

I, also, have my writing beyond the blog. I write poetry almost continuously. I do write and I am working on a screenplay. Which I lost when my last two hard drives crashed within two weeks of each other. Lost a fair amount of my poetry from 2012 and my screenplay which I had been working on for quite awhile. I have notes and dialog written in notebooks and characters names and some descriptions and the story is already written out in my head. I rewrote the outline so many times, now I just have to recommit it to my screenwriters program which is excellent and super helpful and I have a novel and other stories and ideas that I want to adapt into screenplays. I guess what I am saying is that my life feels full. There may be some things that I may dream of wanting to have but everyone dreams. I use my imagination to make them come true in my writing. I can do anything and go anywhere when I am inside of my imagination. I just want to cry for real. I can laugh all I want but to cry, that is something I really want to do and to feel okay about it and to feel good about it. I want to cry when I feel the need to cry and not feel ashamed. I want tears that are real coming from my eyes because I want them to and/or I need them to.

into loneliness by chris keithley

So, I would say that answering the question on Loneliness: “Are We Lonely?” Is a very complicated question to answer and one that is an extremely difficult issue to resolve. Just something to think about when you feel any kind of loneliness creeping in on you.

Pink Floyd-Comfortably Numb