Is One Lonely or a Number?

Kat (My adopted daughter, from Berlin)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiKcd7yPLdU  "One" - Three Dog Night
(Dig those striped pants!  They'd be hot in the "Vintage" sales)

Any day is a good day to write.  But, there’s something about a rainy day that gets me feeling more reflective.  I look out the window more often.  I slow down.  I hear Mother Nature whispering to me, “Forget about getting out and doing something.  Rest. Let me do my spring magic.”  

So, my hands click away with thoughts I’ve wanted to put down for a week.  They’re about loneliness and being alone.  The thoughts seem to belong together.  They did, in my mind, the first few days after I returned from Tennessee, last week. 

The more I thought about my feelings and physical aloneness, the wider the division got between loneliness and being alone.

Man Reading On Ferry Boat, on the Bosphorous

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

I won’t deny, I cried when I left my sister in Tennessee, last week.  Bawled.  I knew I’d miss her and miss our time together.  Knowing we probably won’t be together until the end of summer, made it harder.  

I’ve realized those feelings aren’t loneliness..  They’re sadness, frustration, even grief.  We connect with each other while we’re apart.  It bridges the gap, so I don’t feel void of her companionship.  I take all the new memories we made back with me.  

My daughters are apart from me, most of the year, too.  I don’t feel loneliness because of the distance between us.  We connect and share our lives with each other during our times apart.  Nothing replaces a hug and a kiss from them.  But,  technology has filled a gap and we’re never really so far from each other. 

My husband will never return.  I don’t feel disconnected like before.  I can’t text him or talk to him, but I feel linked with him.  When I hear his words (in my mind) relating to a situation, see things that would make him laugh, or bring back a memory we made together, I manage being without him.  I can even argue with him and know what he is going to say. (Just like I thought I could when he was alive!)  None of those things replace him.  They do help me manage.

Living alone isn’t new to me.  I’ve adapted.  I go places, see people, connect with friends and family and I’m not alone.

Mary Jean (my Grand-niece)

I’m more conscious about assessing my emotional state.  Like checking on the weather.  I look inside my heart and see if it’s cloudy, sunny, windy or calm.  I didn’t think my weather pattern would ever evolve for me.  I admit, I didn’t even question the storms, the floods and droughts I've gone through.  

I worked harder on stifling negative feelings.  Snuffing them out!  Did caging them in, work? It only made them lash out more.  And weather is nothing to try to corral.  It comes, it hits, it passes.

It’s getting easier to understand.  When I check inward, I notice I’m content.  I’m comfortable being alone.  I’m spending more and more time in calm weather.  When I'm able to ward off the mindset, being alone = loneliness, I can enjoy my true emotions.

My Niece, Jenna, Ready to Tackle it Alone

My counselor says, “Being alone is a numerical concept.  Loneliness is an emotional concept.”  I agree.  Social standards dictate-no one should have to live alone.  I’d like it to state-no one should have to be lonely.  Many people live in families, with roommates, in shared housing and they can feel lonely.  I can be at Hill Auditorium with thousands of people around me and I can feel lonely, not alone.

I’m still learning.  I do feel lonely, sometimes.  It especially hits when I have no one to share things with.  From seeing newly sprouted tulips on my walk, to an amazing omelet I just made for a meal.  Both can warm my heart with or without someone to share them with, but it takes time to rebuild the castle.  I’m working on it.  And like any hard work, accomplishments begin from the ground up and it’s worth the effort. 

These quotes are from my daughter, Heidi’s, favorite author, Haruki Murakami.  

“Why do people have to be this lonely? 

What's the point of it all? 

Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, 

looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? 

Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?” 

From Sputnick Sweetheart

Actor Depicting Loneliness (Ann Arbor)

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. 

The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. 

The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.”  From The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Terry DeSelm's Stainglass Creation

 ''Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step.    From Kafka on the Shore