I am a friend to many lonely people. These are beautiful people, both inside and out, who work daily in a trade or in their art. They live full lives among others, and possibly, you would not recognize their loneliness at all if you did not know them.
I am a friend to many lonely people which is to say that I possibly am not a good friend. In fairness, my friends are scattered throughout the country and the world. I don't see many of them very often at all, but we manage to keep in touch mostly through emails and phone calls. When I do see my friends, we have an easy rapport. It hardly seems that we haven't seen each other in six months or a year. We catch up on the big happenings first. I have had so many big happenings of late I seem to dominate the conversation. But then it's time for the real stuff: how are you? Really?
No one ever says: "I am lonely." But I can see it. Loneliness is seated right next to my friend.
Honestly, I want to look away. I don't want to see loneliness cozied up next to my friend--because what am I to do? My friends are lonely because they are searching for (or searching again for) a life partner. They are lonely because the one they found is barely there. What role if any, can a friend have in curing this kind of loneliness? I don't know.
Loneliness is difficult for me to understand. I am mostly around people. There are always lots of people around me. So, I cultivate aloneness. I revel in the solitary time I spend at an artist colony or even at home. Alone, I am able to hear myself better; I enjoy living in my own personal time zone. I have fantasized often of renting a home on the Vineyard or Cape Cod during the off-season. I would hole myself up for a couple of months and see what happened. No people. What would I hear myself say?
But loneliness is different than being alone. Alone, I always know that I will soon have companionship again. But what to do? If your friend is lonely, what do you do?
Photo by John Simoudis.
