Published on 12, July, 2020
For me, loneliness varies widely.
I can be totally alone at home all day. Not speaking to anyone. Yet not feel lonely.
At other times I'm surrounded by people, all communicating, but I feel completely alone and very very lonely.
School was a loneliness nightmare. Children all around me. But I was totally alone year after year
Yesterday I felt almost ok. Heard a sad song on the radio and suddenly the loneliness hit me.
I identify, Robert. I often feel more alone at work, surrounded by people who are ignoring me, than I do at home on my own. School was the same, too.
It's funny, too, how small things can catch me out. After my divorce, I got on with my life quite well. Although I still felt love for my ex-wife, whom I no longer had any contact with, I felt more settled as a single person. One day about 6 months later, thinking of nothing in particular, I was driving with Classic FM on. Suddenly, a piece of music came on that we'd had played at our wedding: Faure's 'Cantique de Jean Racine.' On impulse, I switched it off. Then I had to pull over. I was in bits.
13 years later - last Saturday, in fact - I was going through YouTube, as I often do, looking for nice music to play. I happened upon Annie Lennox's 'No More I Love Yous'. This was a song I'd played a lot in the year after my divorce - usually when I'd had a few drinks - and would invariably end up in tears. Now, in the light of no longer having my mum, it takes on an extra poignancy. I played it... and was soon in tears. It occurred to me that there really is no one left on earth to say 'I love you' to me - or even just to think it.
I mainly work from home these days, which is better by far than being subcontracted to a company to work. But there is still a school where I work and that can be isolating. It might be because of the difference in language and culture though, alongside the fact that I have a part-time status that means I don't have to stay on the premises and attend meetings. That latter is no loss because I loathe meetings!
I wish things could have been different regarding my own school days, especially at secondary school.
My Dad died a couple of years ago too and my mother is now in a home, after a stroke that seemed to bring on full-on dementia overnight. It did not take long after that for other family members to continue the tradition of casting me in the role of black sheep and blaming me for everything though.
It can certainly be hard to find people on some kind of wavelength, though there are one or two. I am still in touch with some of the old artist friends from a community we had in the UK. Others are dead though, one jumped off a train way back, another died soon after my Dad after drinking herself to death.
In the art world here, things have opened up as many creatives have got sick of the closed doors here. I find it is a question of checking to see what kind of agendas other people may have and what sort of hidden snobberies and projections. Apart from the summer, most of the time the day job leaves me too exhausted to want to meet new people much anyway.
That's a sad thought! I lost my dad a few months ago and it does bring up some unsettling realisations.