Loneliness and Solitude

A simple distinction. Loneliness is a lack, and the feeling tone is an ache, pang, or longing. Solitude lacks nothing, and there's no longing or sense of pain. Uncomfortable alone or in the presence of those who don't get it? That's loneliness. Perfectly happy alone and enjoying one's solitary or unconnected self? That's solitude. To be perfectly happy with someone else might also be a form of solitude, like a solitude dyad paradox, but that remains an open question. 

I keep hoping REI and Subaru will sponsor my transition post Ph.D. So far, they have not returned my calls. You can't see the Yeti cooler that matches Sappho. They aren't returning my calls either.

I was encountering both on my sojourn in Baja and have been, for the past many, many years. There have been long stretches of time when I have had a busy relationship life of one kind of another, either within my family of origin or among friends, or with a lover or partner or spouse, when I have felt lonelier than when I have actually been solitary. I wish there were a specific word for this grinding, bitter, hollow feeling of being surrounded by people or being with one other person and feeling the same, or even an intensified, kind of absence, longing, gap, and the ache of loneliness. To be not gotten but not to know because there;'s no one around is easier in a lot of ways than to be with one's supposed connection and not gotten. 

It is a common refrain among recovering people that "we never fit in and always felt like people just didn't understand us." One of the acute stabbing or dull chronic pains of my life that alcohol and cocaine were a solution for. I distinctly recall feeling that booze in particular lifted that cloud of not fitting in and it seemed like the perfect social medicine for me. 

One of the existential processes that feels necessary for me is to "go through" loneliness to get to solitude. This has often been the case when I go on solo camping trips. There's no immediate experience of blissful, footloose and fancy free complete self sufficiency and enjoyment of my own company. I have to go through stages of longing, grief, some bewilderment and a sense of dis-ease, being alone. 

But once I provide enough space for solitude to start breathing, it becomes established. I sometimes "find myself" free, easy, unattached, not wishing for anyone or anything, simply enjoying what I am doing, on my own. These are extremely strengthening and valuable moments, providing proof especially in painful, lonely or abandoned moments that it is possible to be alone and to be happy. To be alone and to be happy is one of the ways to reconfigure the hardness of heart, bitterness, and mistrust that sometimes characterizes my rejection of the prospect of being connected to others, especially women. 

I have also been reflecting on the free flow of intense emotions that is the normal state of my heart, when I am not trying to dam, redirect, chain, deny or interrogate what I am feeling. I've been especially angry in a lot of ways the past several months, and I tend to try to manage anger in a wide variety of ways, but have really been enjoying just feeling angry, without expressing it to anyone but also without denying it to myself. One of my 2020 decisions has been to be real about my feelings, for myself. To stop being fake and pretending. I was cowed by this prospect at first because it seemed to present as involving tremendous risk of exposure to others. But then I realized I don't have to express what I am feeling, at all, to anyone. The resolution is to simply express it, find it, be with it, and let it be *for myself*. To honor my own feeling life *for myself* and fuck expressing it to anyone whatsoever unless they earn my trust. I have trusted the wrong people for the wrong reasons and have presented too much of my emotional life to people who can't show up for it, but I think this has often been a side effect of simply not showing up for it *myself*.  

I was talking with a friend of mine last night and said "I don't trust people enough to simply say to them, 'you hurt my feelings.'" She said, "well, I don't think it's mistrust for me so much as ego. It's humbling or even humiliating to allow oneself to be a fool in front of another person. And having allowed myself to get my feelings hurt in the first place, I judge myself harshly, and I say to myself 'shit, you are a fucking idiot, how could you have allowed yourself to be hurt?', and then I have to say or do something else to the person who has hurt me. Ghost them, attack them, blame them, manipulate them. It's not that I don't trust them, it's that I fucking hate myself." That gives me a lot to work with. 

In loneliness, there is also a lot of self hatred. If I had the company of someone or others, I wouldn't even have to confront the "problem" of myself. 

In solitude, the soft animal of my body gets to love what it loves (thanks Mary Oliver), I get to feel vulnerable, foolish, hurt, angry, whatever. None of my emotional life needs to be witnessed or validated, except by me. No one is responsible for my emotional life except me, myself, and I. I don't need to perform it, I don't need to share it, I don't need to "trust" any motherfucker whatsoever with any of it. Someone else being "unavailable" or "abandoning me" becomes irrelevant, if I myself am available and do not abandon or betray myself. 

"The most terrifying thing in this culture is to feel," said Cecil Taylor, and it takes courage, that is, heart, to show up for solitude, especially since the descent into loneliness seems like a constant prerequisite. But, really, if there's that solitary, enjoyable, comfortable, safe, autonomous, free ground always available if one is willing to pay the price, this seems like the best treasure. The "solution" to abandonment issues isn't, in this context, to find reliable people who will not abandon me, haha, what a fucking joke really—is there any such thing as a reliable human being? 

The "solution" is to not abandon myself. Such a simple idea but it has taken me decades to get it to form in my heart and guts.