loneliness | Thornfield Hall

The other day, I wrote a piece about going to my first Zoom meeting.

“I thought we’d be like the Lonely Hearts club, and I’m sure there WERE some lonely people, I among them, but this cheered everybody up. At least I hope it did. “

A commenter took offense. “Not sure it’s fair to categorize people who attend zoom workshops, groups, lectures, as lonely. I have family, a husband, and many friends and I still teach regular classes. . Why stigmatize us as lonely?’

First, let me say that there is no stigma to loneliness. It is a part of life that tells you what you need.. I have been lonely, and then suddenly it’s over. And you can be lonely even if you have a family and friends. No matter how many people are around, there are moments when you have to get away from them, when you want to be alone, and being alone is not the same as loneliness. So you’re hosting a party, and suddenly you want to get away from all those people, so you go downstairs and sit on the stoop, and wonder why you thought you would have fun.

I have to say I felt lonely at my party. So I didn’t return. I just couldn’t bear it. Instead, I went over to my husband’s apartment a few blocks away – we were separated – and l was horrified by the bullet hole in the window. “You can’t live here. It’s dangerous.”

And he couldn’t sleep. Not at all. He asked if he could come home with me, and I was so relieved. I couldn’t sleep, either. And by the time we got home, the party had dispersed, and he was in my bed again,

When I need to cheer up I read my favorite short story by Allan Sillitoe, “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.” The narrator, who is in Borstal for robbing a bakery, is a cross-county star, the fastest runner the Borstal governor has ever seen. They let him train three days a week, and they are counting on him to win the race so the governor can flaunt the trophy. It will not be the runner’s trophy.

The narrator loves to run.

“Over the first stile, without trying, I was still in the lead but one… I ran to a steady jog trot rhythm, and soon it was so smooth I forgot I was running, and I was hardly able to know that my legs were lifting and falling and my arms going in and out, and my lungs didn’t seem to be working at all, and my heart stopped that wicked thumping I always get in the beginning of the race.”

And then he’s at the finish line. The governor of the Borstal is cheering him on. The Borstal boys are cheering him on.

And he stops. He does not cross the finish line. He is my hero, one of my favorite characters in literature. I admire impulsiveness, I admire rebellion, I admire anyone who refuses to toe the line.

In November, I told my husband that if Clinton won the election, I would quit my job. He thought that was a great idea. He had told me not to take the job in the first place. :”You wouldn’t dare,” a frenemy said. Oh, wouldn’t I?

Clinton won the election, I quit my job, I had to fight to get my final paycheck, but I was free. Was I impulsive? I should say so. Should I have crossed the finish line ? Absolutely not.

Working at a job you dislike can be very lonely. I was one of four women “Every day feels like a rape,” one of them said. It wasn’t quite that bad for me, because I was older and bossier, but it wasn’t pleasant. Now I went home every night and was happy.

And so I stopped before the finish line, which would have been a dead end for me. It would have been better for them – I am not bragging when I say I was irreplaceable – they could not find a replacement -but I went home and wrote. I wrote, wrote, wrote, and wrote some more. I

So loneliness can be a good thing. It can tell you what’s important to you. It can warn you not to be unhappy. There is no stigma to loneliness.

We need loneliness to tell us who we are and need to be. Fortunately, I haven’t been lonely in years, because I live with my best friend.

The concept of loneliness on the internet is widely accepted. Loneliness, period, is clickbait. Editors and writers are susceptible to studies on loneliness. Editor to reporter: “Write a piece on loneliness on the internet. Check out the University of Blah study. Good stuff!”

We all want to be happy, we all want loads of friends, we all socialize with our dysfunctional families, and everyone is terrified of solitude except Thoreau.

Yet when I read these articles on loneliness I am incredulous. The studies conclude that people are anxious and lonely because they don’t get enough likes, because their lives are less exciting than their rivals’ on Facebook, and they don’t look charming enough in filtered selfies.

IIn short, we are a nation in crisis. The lonely ones are so depressed by the lack of likes on social media or by not resembling Taylor Swift or Nicole Kidman that they will end up in the looney bin for as long as their insurance will cover it. There they will be expected to sand and paint ceramic animals in crafts (a cheap form of art therapy).

You know what I say: Turn off your like button! Turn off your filters! Get off YouTube immediately! Don’t even try to look like Taylor Swift!

The odd thing is that the writers of the articles on loneliness never indicate the affirmation of the act of writing, which is surely part of the motivation to post. Of course we write alone, but it doesn’t feel lonely: it is an affirmation of our flights of fancy, a stimulation or simulation of happiness. It forms an intuitive connection between our hands, our keyboards and our flow of words.

And the studies may be biased. How is the control group chosen? We don’t know. An acquaintance once participated in a study by a famous sociologist. She claims that she and her friends mischievously lied to the researchers, because the questions were so absurd, so obviously based on the assumption that women are wispy and delicate. The resulting book based on the study was considered profound.

All I can say is everyone loves clickbait.