Lonely, that old familiar

“I want to be seen, to be understood deeply and to be not so very lonely.” Jodie Foster ended her memorable 2013 Golden Globe lifetime achievement award speech with these words. At 50, she was honoured for her 47 year film career, among her peers, friends and family.  I’m sure it was an incongruous moment for many people. How could someone so successful, so talented, so obviously surrounded by love and support possibly be lonely?

That’s a million dollar question, isn’t it?

I’ve written a lot about loneliness, about my experience with it. I’ve defended it as a part of being human, as something to be worked through, not avoided. I’ve even said learning to deal with it is a kind of right of passage toward adulthood.

That doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when it unexpectedly descends upon me.

Lately I’ve been trying to describe what loneliness is like, put actual words to the feeling of it. What I’ve come up with pales in comparison to its reality. Loneliness equals emptiness, a void, a hole, an abyss. It’s a place where no thoughts or words can exist. There’s no sound but it’s not even numbness. It just is.

It’s a big something that could easily swallow you up,  but it feels like a whole lot of nothing. I’d say a heart-shaped hole, but I don’t think that’s quite right. After all, the precise difficulty is in being able to feel the lack.

Loneliness is no-one’s fault. Not mine, not yours for not being able to fix it for me. Loneliness is momentary but feels endless. It comes and goes. Sometimes daily. Other times so intermittently that you think it might have gone away for good. Like you might have finally been able to banish it from your life. Somehow.

That’s why I’ve been very surprised by that old familiar feeling for the last few weeks. I’d been thinking, and even saying out loud, that maybe that part of my life, the lonely part, is over. I used to think it was attached to the loss of my mother. Then, I said my final goodbye to her by scattering her ashes last November and I felt only relief and a momentous push forward. On my birthday in early December I sat surrounded by good friends – some I’ve known for years, some newer than that, with an unfamiliar but beautiful feeling of satisfaction, and happiness.. joy even. I entered the new year on an upswing.

I’m not unhappy, but that’s besides the point, because it would seem that lonely has nothing much to do with happy. Jodie Foster can probably attest to that, as she spoke of loneliness while beaming out at her two sons.

I should have remembered that, for me at least, loneliness is attached to sense of belonging, that one persistent demon I have yet to fully conquer in my life. Where do I belong, and to whom, other than myself? Who’s with me in this life? Who’s willing to go that distance?

I can’t pin point the exact moment I felt that old familiar again. I might have been surfing the internet, tweeting, facebooking, tumbling, watching a movie or the news, or reading.  Loneliness freezes the moment and I can’t think of anything to think. It’s deep, long and empty. It doesn’t feel attached to anything, anyone or any circumstance. I don’t know where it starts or when it will end. It doesn’t make me sad until after it’s over. I don’t feel like crying, I don’t need to talk to anyone. It no longer feels desperate. I just have to wait it out. It’s only in the aftermath that I can name it. And then the intellectualizing begins. Why now, why me, why can’t it go away forever? What will make it disappear?

It’s just the strangest thing. It’s so incredibly…. lonely. And then it’s over til the next time.

See, I told you I couldn’t describe it.