Understanding Loneliness

"Friendship with oneself is all important because without it 

one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world." 

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Growing up as an only child, I never felt sensations of loneliness.  The word itself mystified. My creativity and a curious mind teased entertainment. Always on the move, I explored, invented and asked questions. Deviosity often reigned.

Once feeling restless during a Liberace concert at San Francisco's St. Francis hotel, my six year old self adventured on stage and sat next to the pianist. On a July night, I asked him to play, "Silent Night." He scowled and muttered, "Go away little girl!" several times trying to push me off the bench. I stood my ground and existed the stage only after he played my request.  

During a luncheon meeting seated next to Senator Richard Nixon. I grew tired of the conversations. "Who is on top of the capitol building?" I asked. When he answered incorrectly, I replied, " A statue of Chief Massasoit." A month later, he sent me a letter acknowledging my correct response.

As the above photograph reveals, some bands let me stay and dance when I sneaked on stage.

Later on in high school, the lyrics of Roy Orbison didn't provide a clue: Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah. Ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah. Oh-oh-oh-oh-wah. Only the lonely . . . .  Sorry, I don't know the way you feel tonight.

Eleanor Roosevelt's line above about friendship with oneself made the most impact. As a result, loneliness has never entered my frame of mind. 

Over the years, I have asked individuals what that feeling of loneliness means physically and mentally. Their examples always felt distant. 

While spending time as a travel writer, I visited a bed and breakfast inn and read a comment in a bedside journal, "Now I am alone but not so lonely as I felt living with her." The writer's simple sentence sent a tidal wave frothing and spinning in my chest. The writer's place of longing and pain lingered with me.

I began to notice emptiness in others during social settings or family gatherings when longing circulates through minds and bodies. How does someone, as John O' Donohue wrote, "set the ghosts of longing free" ?

Two novels recently added to my search for sensations. They captured the essence of loneliness. Peter Hoeg in The Elephant Keepers' Children describes his loneliness as, "being trapped within myself, inside the joys and sorrows that reside like floating islands within us all. I shift my attention to what those islands are adrift upon."

In Canada, Richard Ford  details a loneliness, " . . . like being in a long line, waiting to reach the point where it's promised something good will happen.  Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and father away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you."

The search through associations continues to provide clues. Thankfully, I still have not experienced loneliness first hand.

Creative Write:  Write about feeling alone and what it means to feel lonely. How would you reveal loneliness in emotions and sensations?  What metaphor would you design to reveal the longing?