Loneliness

Loneliness. Just typing the word makes me chill. Give me a minute; I need to prepare myself a cup of tea. Why not bringing over some cookies too? Maybe a blanket over the shoulders will help. Anything, we’ll do anything to avoid this feeling. The pain of loneliness has been and will ever be the most painful of all existing pains.

Loneliness it’s not just about not having a partner; it can be anything. You can be married and have 5 children and still feel tremendously lonely. Have 10873242 friends on different networks and still be lonely. Go out every single night, spend thousands of hours on the phone with friends, have tons of family around and still be very, very lonely.

And yes, we will do anything to escape this feeling. We will give up on dreams, values or ideals to avoid rejection; we will accede to do things we usually dislike; wear outfits we don’t want, talk and behave in a different way we usually do, go to places we hate, over eat, stay in relationships that are tremendously hazard for us or in a very damaging marriage. We will be loud and fake... and the list goes on and on…but the result is always the same: we go to bed, alone. Then, a tear roles through our cheeks in the middle of the night, when nobody can see us. We suffer in silence, and at the end of the day our loneliness eats our hearts up.

In my early 20’s, I moved to a foreign country, with a foreign language and a foreign culture. At the beginning, when everything was still new and bright, the excitement didn’t leave me any spare time for feelings of homesickness or so. But as time went on, and lights went off, I started feeling very alone. Back then I was already in my last year at Fine Arts School, and had to think about my graduation project. I thought of loneliness. I wasn’t just feeling homesick; I was feeling very lonely in every aspect of my life and wanted to express it. I thought of all the people that might feel this way and suffer in silence. I wanted to give a voice to that one thing that had none. I started painting.

"Silence of Midnight"

"So tired"

Short time after starting, I felt frustrated. The paintings were coming out nice, but I just couldn’t express through them the ideas on my mind. It wasn’t accurate. I felt that the paintings expressed better the emotional pain in the loneliness rather than the loneliness itself.

 People suggested I should give up on the subject and go for a trendier and easier quest. But I wasn’t willing to give up. One glorious day I met a photography teacher of the school and somehow we started chatting. I told him about the project and he suggested trying with photography. He encouraged shooting some pictures and bringing them back to him for some feedback. After shooting about 360 pictures, I came back to him with tons of raw material; he liked it and offered to supervise my work (a must for the graduation project). And the rest is on the pictures below!

"Just Lonely"

"Would you be my friend?"

"Eccentricity can be very lonely"

"Hello...ello...looo...lo"

"So many empty benches"

"The en of the day"

"feeling so small"

I can only say that loneliness is something very hard and painful, especially around the holidays or birthdays when we naturally would like to feel surrounded of love, acceptance and belonging. We all dream of having that person beside us that will keep us warm through the winter, light our days through the summer, hold us when feeling weak and share our glorious moments with us. But sadly, that is not always possible. There are times that nature makes its own and takes our loved ones away, leaving us devastated and broken. Sometimes the one we love doesn’t correspond us. Or we are just too afraid to connect and love again after being hurt so many times before, so we hide behind a protective shield that won’t let anyone come in; even though sharing our life with someone is the one thing we most want and desire in our whole lives. No matter the reason, the pain of loneliness is deep and sharp, and needs attentions, nurturing and healing.

Even though I hate the clichés that good-intended people will offer for advice – such as “if you connect to yourself, you won’t need anything else and won’t feel alone anymore – (and then I think to myself: yuck! Let me see you telling this to yourself if you were divorced or widow or forever single, instead of having a great husband and dreamy children…). But anyway, and even though I hate to confess this, there is something truth in this cheap advice. I think that even though connecting to yourself will not bring your loved one back (sometimes unfortunately and sometimes luckily cause you are better off without this person - though you just don’t know it yet!), there is something about connecting to your pain and giving it legitimization that definitely souses it a lot!.

Try expressing it through any technique: Art Therapy or PhotoTherapy (there are other therapies as well but sadly I am not very learned of them – feel free to let me know about them!). Connecting to your pain and giving it space and shape will make it more bearable, since most of the time what makes it even more painful and scary is the fact that we are not aware of its dimensions and deepness. So instead of facing it once and for good, he becomes our shadow, chasing us and making our lives miserable.

I found a great article on About.com about accepting emotional pain. Here I quote an exact part of it:

What Is Emotional Acceptance? 

"Often, when we have an uncomfortable feeling, such as sadness, fear or shame, our first reaction is to reject that feeling. We may tell ourselves that the feeling is a “bad feeling” that we do not want to have. Next, we may do something to try to get rid of the feeling, such as trying to push the feeling away or using drugs or alcohol to feel better.Certainly, no one wants to walk around feeling emotional pain all of the time, but when we reject our emotions, we may actually make things worse for ourselves (see this article on problems associated with suppressing emotions). And often, emotions arise because they give us helpful information about the world. So sometimes getting rid of emotions is not the best idea.
An alternative is learning to accept your emotional experiences. Accepting means that you practice allowing your emotions to be what they are, without judging them or trying to change them. Acceptance means letting go of attempts to control your emotions and learning that emotions themselves cannot harm you (although, the things we do to try to get rid of emotions, i.e., using alcohol, can harm you). 

Accepting Emotions Is Not Resigning Yourself to Pain 

It is important to make the distinction between acceptance and resignation. Accepting emotions do not mean that you resign yourself to always feeling terrible or wallowing in pain. It also doesn't mean that you hold on to painful emotions or try to push yourself to experience emotional pain. Acceptance simply means being aware of your emotions and accepting them for what they are right now".

For the whole article click here.

I hope this post was of some help. And hang on there!! As someone wrote once (source unknown):

"Everything will be Ok in the end. If it’s not Ok, it’s not the end".