The Case for Being Lonely

It’s been over five years since I lost my husband, Charlie, to ALS.  I was two days past my 44^th birthday when he passed; our daughter was eleven.  Over the last couple of years, THE QUESTION has began popping up more and more often, usually within the first few moments of conversation. 

So…are you seeing anyone yet?  Have you fallen in love again?  I/we just want to see you happy… 

At face value, there’s nothing wrong with those questions, that sentiment.  I know that the ones asking care about me and truly wish for my happiness.  (Or, in some cases, it could be they’re just nosy and want something to gossip about.  You know who you are.)  But the implication behind these questions is two-fold.  One – that no one can truly be happy unless they are “with” someone; and two – that there’s something wrong with being lonely.  And that made me think of something Charlie said when he was on the fresh end of his diagnosis of ALS.

Those first few months were emotionally brutal.  ALS has no treatment; there is no cure; so, when you get that diagnosis, it feels like your person actually died, right then, right there in front of you.  And every day after, every single minute after, is Groundhog Day, feeling your heart relive that moment on repeat.  I remember wondering if I would ever feel joy again, in acute pain thinking whatever time we had left would be tainted with the heartache of constant grief.

During the same time, our families and friends were hurting for us, too.  I have no doubt that seeing our pain also amplified their own; everyone wanted to help…they just didn’t know how.  So, they suggested the only thing they could – Have you thought about taking an antidepressant?  Lots of people take antidepressants…  Echoed by the doctors – Let’s get you on an antidepressant…

Don’t get me wrong.  There’s nothing wrong with taking antidepressants.  They can and do save lives.  And, eventually, Charlie did end up on them along with a multitude of other meds.  But in those first few months, he didn’t want them.  I will never forget the bewilderment in his voice, his speech slurred and labored when he told me –

I don’t know why everyone thinks I should be taking an antidepressant.  I think, under the circumstances, it’s understandable for me to feel depressed.  I just found out that I have 3-5 years to live, that my body is going to slowly stop working, of course, I’m depressed!  ANYone would be.  What’s so wrong about feeling sad when you get the news you’re going to die from a terminal illness?  [What do they think I’m going to do?  Kill myself?  I only have 3-5 more years to live!]  I would rather just let myself feel it and hope that it’ll get better so we can enjoy whatever time we have left.

I think about that conversation a lot.  Our emotions mimic a roller coaster; there are hills and valleys, excitement and fear.  No aspect of life has the ability to maintain a constant state of perfection – not relationships, not the weather, not our health.  I wonder sometimes if we’ve become such a hedonistic culture that we are incapable of allowing ourselves to sit for any amount of time in our negative feelings?  Whatever those may be – fear, loss, anger, guilt, envy, rejection, or…loneliness. Sometimes, the only way to successfully work through those negative emotions is to acknowledge them, feel them, and in some cases, honor them.  Sometimes the main reason you can spot the good is because you remember, so acutely, what it felt like to live the bad.

In general, I think most of us don’t do very well navigating the distressing side of life.  We are uncomfortable when we come face to face with people dealing with what we perceive to be less than ideal circumstances.  We avert our eyes away from the homeless person panhandling on the corner, maybe even change lanes to add more distance between them and ourselves.  We smile and nod when we pass someone disabled, telling ourselves we don’t want them to think we’re rudely staring, when really, we are the ones who don’t know how to act…what to say.  When someone loses a loved one, we can tell ourselves we don’t want to make them sad by bringing them up, but really, we just don’t know how to act or what to do, should they break down in front of us.  We do not do well playing off pain.

I wonder, what is our true motivation behind wishing for someone else’s happiness?  Are we truly wishing for them to be happy?  Or are we hoping a change in their circumstance will result in one for ourselves?  If they are “happy” then their situation will cease making us feel uncomfortable or guilty and it will stop interfering with our own personal sense of happiness.

This may come as a shock, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be lonely.  Just like with anything else, there are degrees.  And just because someone is alone, doesn’t mean they are lonely.  I recently read something somewhere that said, “I’d rather be lonely on my own than lonely when I’m with another person.”  ß This right here!  I cannot imagine a lonelier situation than that.

I’m a little baffled that anyone would assume I’m not happy.  I don’t think I project a “woe is me” on a tremendously consistent basis.  In fact, I like to think my sense of humor has survived relatively intact, if not blossomed by residing in the deeper realms of the macabre.  I do love a good meme as much as the next girl.  I have won my fair share of “gif-offs” and responded, in kind, to irreverent wordplay with friends.  I have worked hard to cultivate an active lifestyle.  I enjoy people (most days).  I get a genuine kick out of being alive. 

So, I can only assume, that if someone thinks that I’m not happy…it’s because I am alone, a numero uno, flying solo, going “dolo,” unaccompanied, “sleeping single in a double bed…”  You get the point.  Because that’s not the point.     

The point is – it’s what you do and don’t do with your lonely that matters.

While I make no claims to being an expert when it comes to grief, or love, or marriage, or especially dating, I do feel that I have advanced far enough along in my own personal journey to have formed some solid thoughts on dealing with loneliness.  And because I am a consummate list maker, I thought it might not be a bad idea to compile a list of Lonely Do’s and Don’ts. 

Many, if not most of these, are based on my own personal headspace and experience while others are based on observations I’ve made along the way.  Everyone is different.  Not everyone’s journey is going to be the same.  But I’d say it’s a safe bet that the “don’ts” are more critical on the front end of grief, while the “dos” may come into play a bit later.

The Don’ts

1 – Don’t make decisions out of fear. 

This is a tough one.  Because there are so many things to be afraid of, especially when you are widowed in middle age after being married for twenty plus years. 

You’re scared of being alone.  You’re in that Kathy Bates – Fried Green Tomatoes stage of “too young to be old and too old to be young” and feel like your best years are behind you or fading fast.  The window of time to “find” someone else to spend the rest of your life with feels small and narrow. 

I truly believe that any sense of this type of urgency after loss is fueled by panic, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.

2 – Don’t make decisions based on convenience.

It sucks to do everything on your own.  The time is takes to do all the things – groceries, bills, trash, car care, pet care, kid care…it’s never ending.  Things break and you don’t know how to fix them…or they cost too much to fix…ugh.  It’s a hassle.  But in most cases, there are friends or family who can and will help out in a pinch.  And some repairs turn out cheaper than expected.  And I discovered a really cool thing called YouTube where you can search for practically ANYthing and learn how to do it online.  (People sure do like to show off their skills.) 

And a word of caution – be sure to value someone for who they are…and not for what they provide or what they can give you.  You shouldn’t want someone around because you need them to do what you can’t.  You should want them around because their presence in your world makes it a better place.

3 – Don’t let society pressure you to rush…or conform.

Sometimes people want to see you settled for a lot of wrong reasons.  Maybe your single status makes them uncomfortable.  It makes them feel sad so they try to match you up so they can feel happy.  It makes them feel threatened and as long as you’re seen as “available” you remain a threat.  They feel guilty that you might feel like a third wheel and therefore, they feel bad thinking you feel sad when you see other couples together.

Our society seems to have this unspoken rule that two…two and half years is this “magical” time frame for the cycle of grief.  That when a person reaches that magic calendar date, grief has run its course, the dead should be forgotten, and it’s time for the person left behind to move on with their life.  But what society doesn’t understand, is how long it takes someone to come back to life after experiencing death.  Grief isn’t just emotional – it’s physical. 

There are studies that illustrate the effects grief has on the brain.  And if you were a caregiver for the person you lost?  You can multiply the effects exponentially.  The expectation that someone experiencing emotional pain, affected brain function, hormonal changes, and PTSD all while trying to build a new life for themselves, or at least readapt to their former, in a two and a half year time span is ludicrous.  That kind of short-sighted and dismissive attestation is a reflection of the distorted and unreasonable understanding society possesses with regard to the grief process.

I think this expectation places an unreasonable amount of pressure on those of us who are recovering from grief.  Sometimes I think there should be guidelines, like the ones in the movie 28 Days.  When one of the patients in rehab asks how soon they can have a relationship, the answer is – “Well, in your first year, buy a plant, at the end of that year, buy a pet, and IF..

at the end of that second year, they are both still ..alive, that would be when I would recommend starting a relationship.” 

Only, our guidelines might be a little different – have you handled all the practical aspects that arose from the loss?  Have you tried to figure out who you are, yet?  Have you made peace with your new life?  Are you okay?  Not that you are one hundred percent okay, because, again, nothing is always a hundred percent…but are you okay in the sense that you are not messed up?  Are.you.okay?  Because you deserve to be okay.  And you deserve to be okay without giving someone else the credit for you being okay.  And the plant and the pet thing might not be a bad idea, either.

I know the societal norm is that our world operates in couplets.  But not everybody wants to be a Shakespeare.  Some of us might want to be a Sarah Kay…or Eminem…or an Amanda Gorman. 

Maybe the poetry of our life is free verse. 

We should be free to live it and live it out loud.

4 – Don’t try to numb it.

It’s easy to do this.  With – drugs, alcohol, food, meaningless sex.  In the long run, any one of these will likely do more harm than good.  They’ll create additional issues that are even harder to work through to get to that “good” place.  And at the end of the day?  That feeling will still be there, only it’ll be buried under all these brand-new layers of fear, disappointment, and self-disgust.  And it will take even longer to dig yourself out.  Give yourself a chance.  Know that you are worth it.

5 – Don’t settle.

Not to be confused with “don’t compromise” because let’s face it – there ain’t nobody perfect.  And even if you end up with the person of your dreams, they are bound to disappoint you; to hurt you; to make you angry and get on your last nerve because they never replace the empty toilet paper roll or they never put anything where it goes in the kitchen.

But you shouldn’t have to settle.  You shouldn’t have to settle for someone who isn’t your biggest cheerleader; who tears you down instead of building you up; who only takes and never gives; who doesn’t contribute to your life in an equitable and agreed upon manner; someone you can’t count on in the ways that matter most to you.  We all deserve better than that.

6 – Don’t let your happiness be completely dependent on another person’s existence.

Let me explain.  Losing the person you love is devasting.  It hurts, more than you ever thought possible.  You will be sad for a long time.  You will wonder if you will ever be happy again.  That is your love talking and it is non-negotiable.  One of the memes that bounces around the grief community reads, “Grief is just love with no place to go.” 

I think there’s a lot of truth to that sentiment, but ask yourself this – What if you had never met the person that you lost?  Would you have spent every second of your life in misery?  Never knowing what it felt like to be happy? 

Get yourself happy before you “let” another person make you feel happy.  Find out what in this life floats your boat, tickles your fancy, rocks your socks.  If you don’t, then you run the risk of substituting that person’s role in your life for everything else that is worthwhile.  That is a huge burden, and it is not fair to them.  And I wager it would prove to be extremely detrimental to your own emotional welfare later on down the line.

There will come a point –

In those first couple of years, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of pain.  My whole world had collapsed.  I was overcome with this sense of hyper-empathy.  All of my emotions, everything I felt, was amplified in a way that was overwhelming.  I was scared; I was angry; I was lonely and desolate.  At the same time, I had this new appreciation for life, a perspective about living that seemed to manifest overnight.  It was like having a sixth sense.

For a while, that is what powered my mind and body to get out of bed, to do the things, even when my insides felt constantly sick with the pain of losing Charlie.  We had gotten married when we were 21 years old.  I had practically spent my entire life as one half of a whole.  All of a sudden, it felt like I was starting over from scratch.  I had spent the last couple of years caring for him as his disease progressed.  The last year had been especially hard.  I had options, but everything was different.  I wasn’t the same person I was before Charlie got sick, but I didn’t know who I was supposed to be without him, what my profession should be going forward. 

It took a while before my heart finally accepted the fact that life would go on and that was that.  Instead of looking at starting over like it was a curse, I had to flip the script and look at it like it was a gift.  A do-over, so to speak, but this time, from the perspective of someone who had seen some stuff and done some things.  Who did I want to be?  What kind of person did I want to be?  How did I want to live for the rest of my life?

Which brings me to my list of Dos –

The Dos

1 – Face and conquer your fears – on your own terms – under your own steam.

The first thing I had to do before I could make any progress, was to identify my fears and figure out how to get past them.  It took three years to get to that point.  Strangely enough, even though I had started writing a few years before, I had never bothered to write down my fears.  When I finally did, it was…liberating.  It felt like an instantaneous lightening of an immense burden.  I still don’t quite understand it, how it “worked,” but it did.  And that was the beginning of real change for me, of finding my peace.

How you face your fears may look different than mine…than the person next to you. I probably should have sought professional help earlier on. Maybe it would have sped up the process. Instead, I cycled; I wrote; I drank far too much wine.

Ride. Write. Repeat.

By the time I chose to look into the kind of therapy that doesn’t come from a bottle, a keyboard, or wheels, I was already on an upward trajectory. And counseling, for me, was…okay. I ended up with a counselor who was a very nice lady and a veritable well of positivity. But more often than not, I felt like I had a cheerleader when I probably could have used a drill sergeant. Sometimes, you just might need a really good to ass kicking.

2 – Create a solid sense of individual identity.

Charlie and I got married so young, we didn’t know who we were.  We kind of muddled through life together and made it up as we went along.  Much of who we were stemmed from how we’d been raised, our friend groups, our experiences throughout school, in the Navy.  The rest of it kind of sprung up from how we tried to live life.  It wasn’t anything we gave deliberate thought to…or consciously decided…we just kind of “were.”  And I think sometimes, we did ourselves a disservice by not reflecting on that aspect.  How much more could we have discovered about ourselves if we had just tried filling in the blanks?

• I want to be the kind of person who does the following kinds of things –  ____________.
• I want to be the kind of person who thinks about _________________.
• I want to be the kind of person who makes time for ___________________.
• I want to be the kind of person who will ___________________________.
• I want to be the kind of person who thinks _____________ is important.
• I want to be the kind of person who learns how to ____________________.
• I think it’s important to treat people ________________________.
• At the end of the day, I want to feel ____________________________.
• At the end of the day, I want to go to bed knowing _________________________.
• Something that really bothers me is _______________________________.
• Something that gives my life meaning is __________________________.
• Something that gives me a sense of purpose is _________________________.

I think about these things more than I ever did in my younger years.  How can you expect someone to get to know you if you don’t really know yourself?  Most of us continue to evolve with time, change, experience…but it’s important to start from somewhere, to discover who we are and find out what makes us tick.

3 – Identify and determine your own set of values and beliefs.

This seems like a no-brainer until you sit down and start really asking yourself why you believe what you think you believe.  Or you start questioning what your ideas mean…or where certain thoughts come from.  A lot of what we believe is ingrained in us because of what we were taught in school or learned from home at a young age.  And there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, unless you haven’t ever really bothered to examine it yourself…and ask yourself – what do you think?  Does anything feel contradictory?  What have you studied that supports your thoughts and beliefs?  Is there reason to reevaluate any of these ideals based on acquired knowledge?  I’m inclined to think Aristotle was on to something when he said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”  If nothing else, it can at least go a long way to keeping yourself out of trouble.

4 – Develop confidence in your ability to take care of yourself.

There are still many, many things that I don’t enjoy doing, that throw me for a loop.  I hate trying to figure out technical issues with electronics.  I don’t have a lot of patience for that business.  I get tired of hauling the trash to the transfer station; I don’t always feel like walking the dogs or going grocery shopping.  I’m resigned to the fact that if something small gets dropped in the bathroom sink, it’s pretty much lost forever.  But on the whole, I can handle the things that come up.  And if I can’t figure out how to do it myself after consulting YouTube, I can find someone who does. Knowing your limitations and seeking help when you need it takes as much confidence as doing something yourself.

5 – Be as fearless and courageous as your personality will allow. 

Turns out, I kinda like doing things.  Whether that’s a by-product of being up close and personal with one of the worst diseases known to man, or a piece of my personality that had just lain dormant, I’m not sure.

I used to be the kind of person who would see something on T.V. or out the car window in passing and think,

‘That looks cool.  I wonder what it would be like to do that.’ 

Now?  I think,

‘That looks cool.  I’m totally doing that.’ 

And in most cases, I go do.

I unexpectedly found Maine and discovered that it awakened my soul. I moved us halfway across the country on nothing more than my gut feeling that it was absolutely the right thing to do.  [I had reached the requisite ‘Don’t make any major moves or life decisions for two years after loss’ by that point.]

I have no regrets.  I hope to continue discovering new things here that thrill me, things I really enjoy doing, and that I’ll actually keep DOING those things.  I hope I’ll never let them take a backseat to the mundaneness of everyday life.

I’ve reminded myself to never stop learning. I started taking American Sign Language and I’m trying to pick up guitar.  What are some things you might want to learn just for the sake of learning?  How could you make that happen?

 6 – Come to peace with your new life.

This doesn’t mean I don’t remember my old life and wish things could have turned out differently.  It doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped missing Charlie, stopped loving him.  It just means I am grateful for the life that I am living.  I am content in the knowledge that I am creating and maintaining a fulfilling and beautiful life for me and my daughter.  I am free from being constantly plagued by fear clawing at my back or squeezing my insides.

It took a lot of work to get to this point.  It took being intentional with daily gratitude.  It took a lot of cycling, running, and walks in the park practicing mindfulness and contemplating life.  I do my best to see the beauty in this world.  I take pleasure in noting what a marvel it is that we even exist, how amazing the natural world is and how astonishing are our inventions. 

And if (or when) you decide to give up your lonely, take a second and conduct a self-inventory to examine the motivation behind your decision. Are you motivated by fear? Is it less the person, and more the state of “being” you crave? Is there anything you are going to be giving up, or sharing, that you’ll end up regretting? Are you sacrificing your moment, compromising your chance for growth for the sake of companionship?

Or are you in a place where you “know thyself,” confident of what you have to offer, what you want to offer and secure in the knowledge that all your happiness isn’t tied up in whether or not “this” works out?

You are allowed to let yourself have the luxury of being lonely. 

At the very least, you’ll give yourself time to discover who you are, who you want to be, and what it’ll take to get there.  Once you arrive, I’m willing to bet you’ll find yourself better company than you did before. 

And because of that, you might just discover you aren’t quite as lonely as you thought you were.