On: Loneliness
Before COVID descended upon all of us nearly two years ago, I found myself slowly digging my way out of what I would consider long-standing loneliness. I had recently moved to Portland, OR after traveling full-time for a little over a year with my husband and our pets in an RV hitting all the high spots across the country. While I’m so thankful for my time spent traveling, the isolation that came from having no home base and life on the road was quite striking.
Though, it’s not like I had a ton of friends before hitting the road. My teenage years were spent in an abusive relationship where I was forbidden from having any real connection to anyone else and the one friend that I did have tragically passed away before my freshman year of college. I was lucky enough to make a few solid friends in college but as most do, we grew apart as we all graduated, married, and moved to different parts of the country. Maintaining friendships is hard and I never had a solid foundation to build off of.
At 27 when my husband and I sold our home and most of our belongings to hit the road, we both didn’t have any friends to stay in touch with on a meaningful level but we were fortunate to have each other and a magical adventure in front of us. Despite that, we found ourselves 14 months into traveling both having quite the existential breakdown in a campground in Redding, CA. We were exhausted, lonely, and so very strained from living in a 33-ft RV for that long, especially while trying to write our first cookbook. We were desperate and thought settling down with some roots would allow us to expand and connect in the ways in which we craved.
Within a few weeks, we were settled in Portland and started to make a few connections that made us realize how much we truly were isolated. If we only knew what 2020 would hold just one short year later.
When the pandemic hit, we were forced to reckon with the fact that we were living in a large city with very little space to stretch out, and well, breathe, without being right up next to everyone when we stepped outside our door. We semi-reluctantly moved back East to Asheville, NC to be closer to family and have more space. As someone with a primary immune deficiency, we have been very, very strict with isolating ourselves. We skipped holidays, ordered groceries online, and very rarely ventured out of our bubble. Even now, we haven’t eaten in a restaurant or been anywhere unmasked since March 2020.
In August, we moved back to Portland after realizing that the PNW is home, at least for now. That decision was also fueled by the fact that we realized how much moving somewhere we didn’t truly want to be for the sake of family members that ended up ostracizing us for skipping Christmas wasn’t the best decision on our part. It was a good lesson to learn, that living our lives for anyone else was a waste of what little time we’re given. I truly believe that things happen for a reason and that the lesson we learned was worth two cross-country jaunts. Though, it also seems that we’re always on the run. We’ve clearly fallen prey to believing that the grass is greener on the other side.
The truth is, wherever I go, I am. I can’t outrun myself.
I know I’m not alone in this aching loneliness. A recent poll of 1,254 adults aged 18 and older found that 27 percent of millennials have no close friends, 25 percent have no “acquaintances” and 22 percent — or 1 in 5 — have no friends to name. In a world of constant connection, it seems we’re not really connected at all.
Why is this? In my opinion, it’s due to the fact that this world is built for consumption, not connection. We put too much emphasis on making endless amounts of money to live lives that are void of the things that really matter. We order takeout most nights of the week instead of cooking slow and intentional meals with the ones we love. We “like” someone’s post on social media instead of actually texting, or imagine - calling, a friend. We’re all for instant gratification and friendships are in fact built on duration and shared experiences. It’s hard to have duration when you’re constantly on the move.
Milena Batanova, Ph.D., a Harvard researcher posed the question in the 2021 report “Loneliness in America”, “Is loneliness a function of some deep personal angst, or anger towards society, or more so relational, a function of deep discomfort with those around you?” Bingo, all three?
The report also poses a few ways to crawl out of a loneliness spiral. One is reducing time on social media. For the thing that’s supposed to make us feel more “connected”, forgoing the daily scroll actually leads to more contentment and connection with those around us. Personally, I never feel so alone as to when my days are mindlessly spent scrolling through social media and not connecting with others or even myself. I know I’ll always feel better after painting or reading than I would after an hour of scrolling Instagram so why do I get sucked down that path more often than not? It’s the same with exercise, no one has ever said they regret a yoga class or a run around the block so then why is it so hard to initiate?
Personally, for me, I think it all comes down to overwhelm. I’m much more likely to do the things I want to do that take effort when my schedule and mind are clear and it’s much easier to sit in the bathtub at 4 o’clock after a stressful day with a glass of wine scrolling Instagram than it is to roll out my yoga mat.
So what if instead of focusing on all the things we need to do, need to get done, we instead focus on the things we can let go of? What if our goal wasn't to accomplish more but to actually accomplish less so that what we do have the energy for are the things that bring us true happiness which ultimately will lead to being less lonely and more apt to make connections on a deeper level, either with friends, spouses, family, or ourselves? I obviously don’t have the answers but these are the questions I’m pondering lately.
These days, I’m looking forward to the end of the pandemic, or at least the end of the acute phase as we all learn how to live with this new normal. I’m slowly connecting with the friends we left behind in Portland now that we’re back and planning how to make life much more intentional as time goes on. A lot of that looks like opting out of the online space most days. It looks like creating this newsletter where I have an outlet to share these vulnerable essays and have connections and conversations with all of you.
While traveling, I wrote a short piece on loneliness that I’d love to share with you below.
The man seemed both surprised and elated upon my knock on his door in the middle of the sweltering mid-May heat. Well, maybe not sweltering but any temperature above 80 was enough to make me pull the shades, crank up the ac, and pour a glass of chilled wine at two in the afternoon.
The man, dressed in crumpled jeans and a simple faded tee-shirt, looked to be in his mid to upper 50's with smoke grey hair that was starting to recede and a whitish-grey beard that was neatly trimmed, although he still somehow looked disheveled like I had startled him somehow. We had just pulled into the campground in a small town outside of Yosemite, well, it was more of a field really with old farming equipment strewn about with plaques naming their use along with facts and legends about this sleepy little mountain town. The office was closed, a sign nailed to the door with a rusted nail said to knock on the third trailer's door for check-ins on certain days of the week. In a town where the population sign just said "friendly" what more could you expect?
After greeting the gentleman and stating that I had called about a week ago for reservations he instructed us to pull into any campsite, only one was taken in the entire field, and then I was to follow him up to the office for paperwork. Alex, seemingly both grateful for the pull-through campsites and anxious about me following a stranger to a dingy office out of eyesight pulled the truck around to a site covered in trees, a rarity among campsites we've visited over the previous two months. I set off following the man uphill to the office where he checked me in with a bit of small talk. As he talked he seemed to gain momentum realizing he had another living human being in his midst. He chatted about Yosemite and his favorite spots within the park, complete with personal stories from each spot he pointed out.
"Don't drive too fast around this circle, the cops like to issue tickets there", "go to this spot to see the climbers at El Capitan, not this area where most people go", "don't leave camp after 8 am or you'll sit in line for at least an hour before entering the park filled with one too many visitors to enjoy its beauty". Yes, he had many recommendations but most of all I think he just enjoyed talking to another person. How lonely it must be to live in a town of population “friendly".
After settling into camp it dawned on me that maybe the reason I could see his angst, his loneliness, was because it echoed my own. For years I've struggled with making friends. Working from home and not having any friends from college still living in town made it difficult to socialize. I knew that eagerness to chat with someone other than my husband all too well. That eagerness for someone, anyone, to want to talk about something I'm interested in. Yosemite obviously for this man, but a million other things for me.
That sadness that takes over when you realize your list of people that care, really care, for you is so minuscule is heartbreaking. Maybe the answer to everything: loneliness, anxiety, health concerns, financial problems, crises of faith, trauma, abuse, is to find your people. The people that rally around you when things are tough, the people that are there, truly there, when you need someone to talk to. The people that you don't have to hide your true self from to be liked. Those are the people I yearn to find, how to go about finding those people is the world's greatest mystery.
