“I don’t believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it’s about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion which can and should be resisted.”
— Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
I’ve tried it many times, but I can’t.
When people ask me what I write about, and I say I write about loneliness, I can’t resist the weight of that word. There’s no pride. No confidence. Instead, my voice falters into a somber, shameful tone — as if someone cast a spell of stifling vulnerability on me. As if the mere statement that I write about loneliness implies that I feel lonely when I say it — and as if that expresses something fundamentally wrong about me.
It’s ironic. Having researched, explored, and experienced loneliness for years, I should know there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I should know that, in many countries, more than half of the population feels lonely regularly. I should know that loneliness is an inherently human emotion.