The modern loneliness epidemic burst on the scene last year with the surgeon general’s announcement. I have friends at work, the yoga studio, my support group, hiking group. Yet I too feel lonely, part of this loneliness epidemic.
The New American Problem
The Surgeon General, Vivek K Murthy, explained it this way. “When I first took office as Surgeon General in 2014, I didn’t view loneliness as a public health concern. But that was before I embarked on a cross-country listening tour, where I heard stories from my fellow Americans that surprised me. People began to tell me they felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant.”
Something was wrong in America, but what? A number of writers took up the topic.
USA Today went for the dramatic angle. ““It won’t just make you miserable, but loneliness will kill you. … And that’s why it’s a crisis.”It seems very apropos that the USA Today story was published on Christmas Eve. The specter of Scrooge, as solitary as an oyster, and his ghostly visitors telling him to wake up and give a rap about other people — makes him possibly the epitome of loneliness in literature.
Three Varieties of Loneliness
The USA Today article identifies Three Types of Loneliness: psychological, social and existential.
Psychological loneliness happens when we feel like there’s no one out there who can connect with our feelings.
Social loneliness happens when we have no one to spend time with.
And existential loneliness happens when we lose connection with ourselves, or other like minded souls, or even, I might surmise, being a theist, from God.
A Harvard study said that 61% of young Americans suffered from loneliness during COVID epidemic, along with 51% of young mothers. This has probably improved, but it’s interesting that the young, and not the old, were most hard-hit by COVID. That’s interesting, but people over 50 can be lonely too.
Another essay, from The Cut, talks about the loneliness epidemic from the perspective of a young woman who’s left home in Puerto Rico, and who feels lonely within her family now. She has lost touch with the magic of her childhood and with her people, yet everyone still loves each other. It’s a conundrum.
The Loneliness of Changing Seasons of Life
I’ve had this situation with my daughter Tiara in the last couple of years. After so long of feeling a deep closeness as she grew up, as we struggled forward together, and we bolstered each other in our weaknesses, her graduation from higher education and her new status as a mother has left the problems of her youth behind. No more do we have time to cook bodacious meals or create formal dresses from things we find at the thrift store. No more do we enjoy victory by surviving on a financial shoestring.
And no more can she rely on me being the mother, the person who’s responsible for it all. Now Tiara has to pony up. I think for Tiara, this is lonely. And not just because Ella, her six year old daughter, is a handful. It’s lonely because she misses being a young daughter. And I miss knowing all, and being the commensurate fixer and mom. Grandma is not quite the same. I miss my old role. I feel lonely.
But loneliness is not necessarily because there aren’t a lot of people around. Tiara is surrounded by children both at home and at work, not to mention her mother, husband, colleagues … I myself have friends at work, at the yoga studio, at my support group, hiking group. Yet I must admit I too feel lonely. I really would like a romantic partner and I haven’t found anyone who I feel would be appropriate.
Loneliness Can Come From Unmet Emotional Needs
This really ties in with an article by Pam Weintraub that explores how loneliness can come, not from being alone, but by having emotional needs that friends and family can not meet. I can totally identify. And, to tell the truth, looking back, I can remember choosing to spend my life with Leo. I may not have been totally sure about the romantic love aspect of our relationship, but the things he wanted to do were an unbelievably close match with my own best ideas. Cooking, reading, homeschooling, for example. Driving vacations. Seeing the world. Travel, and foreign language. On a good day, he fit my interests.
And I can remember my loneliness going away when Leo came into my life. Leo would come in from grad school and say “Well, we’re reading Catullus. His love for Lesbia has taken a bad turn … ” and I’d feel like the eternal world of art and mind had come into the kitchen. It was like back when I was a child, when my father and mother were grad students. Leo’s collected OCT’s, the Oxford Classical Texts of ancient writers, and they were full of tiny print in 19th century fonts, Latin on the left, English on the right. They suggested magic. I felt connected. No longer lonely.
Someone once joked that Leo looked like Woody Allen, which is ridiculous, Leo was eminently presentable. But he was a New Yorker and, perhaps in corollary, he was just about as funny as Woody Allen. To me anyway. And that’s a banisher of loneliness too.
Sometimes Friendships Which Used to Meet Connection Needs … Don’t Anymore
I have been thinking of this this week. As time went on, the strings began to unravel. I will say that I don’t know if I’d call it exactly lonely later on with Leo around. In full flight from chaos, maybe. Angry. Things were on a downward trajectory.
Especially at the end, when my father was dying, and I’d say “Leo, I feel so bad… ” and he’d shrug. Staring at a computer screen which was always turned away. I remember thinking “who are you? And what’s on that screen?” There was no point in trying to figure out. Before I could see the screen he could switch what was there.
I think again, “Who were you? What went wrong?” and I think about loneliness. Existential loneliness. And I think Leo was probably lonely too. I couldn’t reach him and the marriage had to go. In the end, even he admitted that.
Loneliness is not the End… Necessarily
So that’s it, I’m out of a romantic partner. I don’t like this. But I’m reluctant to take radical action (say, doing online dating, Match.com etc) to fix it. I have other types of connection. My son Andrew talks to me when he gets home from the auto shop where he works. We go skiing and be Coloradoan. I think I’m actually happier overall than I’ve been in 20 years. That sense of “I can’t believe this is my life, how the hell did this happen to me” is pretty much gone.
I have fun. But honestly … that one thing, that existential loneliness, where you wish you knew someone who understands the world of ideas or wants to talk about it. I think that might be a long term problem for me. I accept it. And that makes me part of the loneliness epidemic, with no end in sight. I live in hope. But still.
Sigh.