Entry 2: The Comfort in Loneliness

Van Gogh's painting. Cafe Terrace at Night.

Introduction to Loneliness
There seems to be a strong stigma that exist about loneliness. A lot of people would admit to being depressed than they would admit to being lonely. People fear being judged as unlikeable, a weirdo, or a loser so they don't really discuss their feelings of being alone, being alienated, or being excluded. And by not feeling free to discuss about loneliness adds to the problem and to the judgments of the experience. If people judge themselves for feeling lonely, it makes it even more difficult to change the situation.

The general idea seems to be that if we don't have friends, then there must be something wrong with us. But it's actually not like that. Feeling lonely has little to do with how many friends we have. It's the way we feel inside of us. Some people may feel lonely because they rarely interact with other people and some may feel lonely even though they are surrounded by people, they may not feel connected to them. Many people feel lonely even though they have friends and activities. Having thousands of "friends" is not really the same as having someone to share a movie, or to get a cup of coffee.

Loneliness is actually a different experience than solitude. Solitude is being alone by choice and being comfortable with it. Loneliness means that there is some sort of a discomfort in that aloneness. They want to be more connected to others. Being lonely seems to be about not feeling connected in a meaningful way to others, to the world, to life. Some people choose to be lonely because they are tired of getting hurt and choose to be a lone to protect themselves.

Entry 2: The Comfort in Loneliness

Some days, some nights, I feel so damn lonely and sad deep inside of me, and filled with regrets of the past. Sometimes it overwhelms me as I'm driving on my way home, staring blankly into the road as these cars and bus driving past me. And then I got hit by a sudden burst of realization in the middle of the night. I can't help it and I can't really stop it. All this time I've just realized that I'm alone as I've always been and sometimes it kinda hurts, but I'm slowly learning to take a deep breathe through it and keep walking. I'm slowly learning to make things nice for myself. I'm slowly learning to comfort my own heart when I wake up and feeling blue. I'm slowly learning to find small bits of friendship amongst a crowd full of strangers. I'm slowly learning to find a little moment of joy in a bright blue sky, in a trip somewhere not so far away, a long walk on an early morning in November, or a handwritten letter to an old friend simply saying "I thought of you. I hope you're well."

As I time passes by, as I grow older, I learned that no one, not one single person will come and save you. No one will come riding a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Take care of your body. Build a home for yourself. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something that you want to learn. Read some books and learn them by heart. Get to know more about the author, where they grew up, what books they read themselves. Take yourself out to a nice fancy dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. It's a lovely feeling, to look good and feel good about yourself. And you don't need anyone to confirm it.

I feel so damn lonely and sad deep inside of me, and filled with regrets of the past, but I'm slowly learning to take a deep breathe through it and keep walking. I'm slowly learning to make things nice for myself. Slowly building myself a home with things that I like. Colors that calm me down, a plan to follow when everything gets dark, a few people I try to treat right. I don't sometimes, but it's my intent to do so. I'm learning. I'm learning to make things nice for myself. I'm learning to save myself.

I'm trying, as I always will. And I'm still learning to turn my loneliness into sweet solitude.

"Learn to love solitude, to be more alone with yourselves. The tragedy of today's young people is that they try to unite on the basis of carrying out noisy and aggressive actions so as not to feel lonely, and this is a sad thing. The individual must learn from childhood to be on his own, for this doesn't mean to be lonely: it means to not get bored with oneself, because a person who finds himself being bored when he is alone, it seems to me, is a person in danger."
- Andrei Tarkovsky on being asked, 'what would you like to tell young people?'