It’s raining. I am once again cracking open the inner world, taking a look around. I started The Unstruck Sound to give myself space to embrace my loneliness, to find out why I have always considered my preference to be alone something of which I could be proud, while hiding my loneliness like failure. To finally explain to myself why, anytime I have been given the choice, I almost always choose to be alone but fear what I believe is my fate: a life lived alone.
Next month, I will be exactly ten years older than my mother was when she had me. I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge what that means to me; single, childless and no longer in the age group where I am allowed to be “still figuring things out.” People my age have families, mortgages, robust retirement plans. Yet here I am, too young to give up and too old to explain why I am still alone by choice and nowhere close to having a nest of any kind, floating through this world as though there will someday arrive a magical cloud to cushion my fall in the same way (I assume) husbands and wives do for each other.
But does loneliness belong only to us, the uncoupled? Are we the only ones who have not figured out how to become plural? No longer just the One we have always been, evolved into people who say things like “we love this” and “we hate that.” It’s still just me. I say “I love this” or “I hate that” because I can only speak about myself. And, to be honest, I would rather be alone forever than ever having to share my brain and my language with someone else. There is loneliness in that, too.
The simple answer, of course, is a resounding “no.” We are not the only ones in the midst of this epidemic of loneliness. We are all lonely. We are lonely in cafes and bars, surrounded by other people,
Walking down the street with our headphones in, afraid of accidentally interacting with each other,
Scrolling through other people’s highlights on Instagram,
At work, buckling under the noise and weight of our imposter syndromes,
We are lonelier than we have ever been before, and it’s only going to grow.
So, no, this is not as simple as being single and past a certain age.
What is it, then? I don’t really know yet. I just know that I am alone, I am lonely, and I crave my solitude. Sometimes these things happen simultaneously. Sometimes, I am on a night out with a friend or on a trip with girlfriends and there is no reason for me to suddenly shiver from loneliness but I do. This is not an attempt to fix my loneliness. There is nothing to fix. Our loneliness, despite what Britney told us, is not killing us. Perhaps what is killing us (if you’ll excuse such dramatic language) is the shame in which we wrap our loneliness.
Ah, yes, shame. The shame of being lonely. The funny thing about shame is that it thrives in darkness. The minute we shine a light on it and tell others – anyone – about its existence, it begins to shrink away. So, maybe that’s what this project is really about; shinning the light on the shame of feeling lonely. Whatever it is, and wherever it goes, let me take this chance to thank you for joining the conversation.
Rain trickles down the windowpane. It’s later in the day and the coffee shop is filling back out, this time with people joining other people. They hug each other in greeting and laugh enthusiastically at something their companion said. They are with others. I am still alone.