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The pressure of loneliness

Peter

When people think about loneliness they tend to think of it in terms of absence, emptiness, void. That it’s not so much a thing as the absence of a thing. a wistful feeling of longing. Sometimes loneliness is like that but for me personally sometimes loneliness is more like a pressure. like being trapped thousands of miles deep underwater in the ocean and it’s all pushing down on you crushing you, trapped in the dark under pressure.

People say if you’re lonely just distract yourself. do something to take your mind off it. But you can’t take your mind off that pressure. it’s intrusive, it’s constant and oppressive.

Strange little things can bring that pressure. Like that line from the old song. “Sometimes I feel like my only friend Is the city I live in, the city of angels Lonely as I am, together we cry” sometimes just watching things change around you can bring on that sense of loneliness.

Watching some old restaurant or pub or even a tree that you used to enjoy, that you have a nostalgic memories of, being destroyed. Seeing a friend who gradually stopped responding to your messages has blocked you or deleted their social media.

Bumping into someone and having a conversation and their views are completely different to your own and they look at you like a crazy person for disagreeing with them whereas before you knew at least a few people who saw the world your way.

When someone asks you to tell them a joke and you realise you can’t think of anything. Because conversation is like a muscle and you’ve been so isolated for so long you’ve forgotten how to be witty and interesting. (Even if only in the eyes of a small number of people) your conversation has atrophied. So that you just can’t turn it on like a tap when you need it.

So often life comes along and reminds you that you are alone. not just alone but also trapped in an alien world. It’s that feeling of being trapped in an alien place that doesn’t make room for you. it is so oppressive that lack of connection with anything even remotely like yourself. And all the little reminders of that buildup like a pressure pushing in on you. Trying to break you as a human being.

Loneliness is not merely a wistful feeling. Sometimes it can be truly soul destroying.

Parents

  • The problem is people say that loneliness is a killer, that mental health is just as serious as physical health and just as deserving of support, accommodation and intervention. But it is largely lipservice; they don’t really mean it. They only care about the mental health of those who fit into their pigeonholes of what mental health issues should look like. As soon as you point to someone who they label as creepy or weird and point out that they are also paralysingly lonely they don’t want to know.

    it’s enough to make a person want to give up. I don’t want to alarm anyone but I’ve been there in the past, having intrusive thoughts of giving up. Once upon a time I thought about doing it in some sort of really dramatic make a statement kind of way. That way at least something might change after for other people.

    But I doubt I ever would; it would be too much like letting them win. By them I guess I mean the system, society, those who have been trying to sideline me my entire life. to silence me and make me go away so I’m no longer an inconvenience for them. No longer a challenge to their order that seems designed to make me miserable.

    But I still keep coming back to the sensation that somehow the only thing that will ever change anything it’s something extreme and shocking. I might snap one day and chain myself to a public monument or a TV studio and refused to leave until someone comes and listens to me. It might end up causing me a lot of trouble but it’s a lot less final and maybe just maybe somebody would listen.

  • in reply to Peter

    I'm in that position currently. People have made their minds up about me being this monster, and I feel bad about even talking about it because I feel like I'm playing the victim. I'm not as I know I screwed up but it feels like it won't be good enough until I'm dead in the ground.

    I often feel like I need to have a big screaming meltdown where I end up injuring myself before I get taken seriously.

  • in reply to HMO

    I strongly encourage you not to injure yourself. But I’m slowly coming to the position that maybe making a spectacle of yourself or indeed making a spectacle of myself might be quite necessary sometimes.

    but I’m thinking less meltdown and more very in your face protest.

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  • in reply to HMO

    I strongly encourage you not to injure yourself. But I’m slowly coming to the position that maybe making a spectacle of yourself or indeed making a spectacle of myself might be quite necessary sometimes.

    but I’m thinking less meltdown and more very in your face protest.

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