Loneliness

February 11, 2019 by themindofmani 1 Comment

For the past few months I’ve been grappling with grief from my friends death. This grief has been compounded by moving away from a good support system of friends and having a falling out with one of my best friends. This has all resulted in major insecurities with my ability to even hold friendships and has had me self reflect on how I can change for the better. The problem with this philosophy is that it makes you obsess over things that you can not change.

I know what you’re thinking. You are thinking “hey , this sounds a lot like depression”. I mean, you would be right. This post is titled loneliness and I am going into why I feel lonely. But what I didn’t realize until recently is that grief can absolutely mimic depression and cause depressive symptoms. I’ve gone through cycles in the last few months where I will be fine for days and then a rush of memories brings me back to a place of mourning. In my case, I can relate all of my emotions right now to a series of events that happened months ago.

The storm of emotions that comes your way with grief is indescribable. It is different for everyone and yet it brings emotions that we all have to deal with in our lifetimes. It is normal and human to deal with grief, but in a culture of constant motion, we don’t take the time that is required to actually deal with it. We are fed the ideal that we have to be emotionally “OK” at all times.

My loneliness has likely stemmed from that fact that grief and depression make you turn inward and shun people away. This has led to the feeling of not having a support system. These things are all not true but it has been hard to shed my layer of heartache this winter.

Being human is complicated. Emotions are complicated. As much as I want to be fine right now, I know that being fine is a process. Grief is not something that just goes away after some time of working on it. It comes in cycles. Frankly, I think grief is one of those things that never truly goes away. Its just something that gets subdued over time. It can still hit you 50 years from the event like it happened yesterday. Thats the hard part about grief.

For me, not only did I lose a friend to death (the ultimate form of loss), but I also lost one of my best friends last year to a major falling out. Death is one thing but grief from losing someone who is still alive and well in this world is something else. I want to have my best friend back but somethings can’t be fixed and some hurts can’t be undone. It’s harsh, but it is also a reality. It was horrible that this falling out happened after our mutual friend died, but a lot of us connected to that death kind of fell apart and away from one another. The wounds are slowly starting to heal but in their place we will always have scars. These scars will be a forever reminder of what happened but like all scars, they will eventually also show us the strength that only comes with healing.

Maybe this post should have been titled grief, but I will stick with loneliness for now because grief brings with it a whole mess of emotions that include loneliness. These emotions are like a dark cloud that you feel stuck in. You can’t see in front of you or behind but you know you just have to pick a direction and move out of it. I guess this is a reminder to just keep moving.