Lonely In A Crowd...
I am home. I am surrounded by friends and family and yet I have this feeling I have never experienced before. To be honest it started in Guatemala. I was not sure what it was at first. It made me feel a bit sad. It made me miss people. It made me long for my friends. I realized it was coming back again and again and tried to identify it, but it was unfamiliar to me. Eventually it was like a light bulb lit up over my head! LONELINESS! Oh my god! I am lonely!
This was a new feeling for me and one I admit that I never thought I could fall vulnerable to. I had certain ideas about what kind of people felt lonely. When I thought of loneliness I thought of desperate people searching for love-I have never cared if I find romantic love, in fact I go out of my way to avoid it. I thought of elderly people with no family who had lost all their friends to age or disease-I still have friends and family. I thought of the socially inept who never had romantic love or friends and family-I am a social butterfly. And yet, the feeling was definitely loneliness. How is that possible?
I started to examine this. I blamed my circumstances in Guatemala. Although, I meet people quite easily, I was there for four months. Most other people were there for a week or two at most. I was lucky in the beginning. I met several people who were there for five or six weeks. When they left the loneliness came. To add to that complication, the dangers abound for a woman traveling alone in Guatemala often did not allow me to go out unless I had an escort. That made things difficult when I was the only student living in my house. As much as I missed my friends in Korea, I started to look forward to returning to Boston. I know people in Boston. I would be close to my family.
When I returned to Boston I was overwhelmed. I had to buy a car, start a new job, find a place to live and was visiting my family in New Hampshire every other weekend trying to reconnect. I was so happy to be home and to be around my family. I was thrilled to get to know my nephew and to be more than a visitor again.
As time has gone by and I have become more settled in Boston, the loneliness has returned. At first I was frustrated and could not imagine how this could be. One weekend when I was feeling particularly lonely I went up to stay with my sister. Although I found some comfort in being with her and my brother-in-law, it did not stave off the feeling of loneliness. This has become increasingly frustrating for me, and I have had no choice but to examine it and try to understand the feelings.
I am so often surrounded by people, so how can I possibly still have bouts of feeling lonely? I started to think about the people I miss and what they represent. When I left Belgium I missed my two roommates and two very close friends the most. There are a few people in particular that I miss from my time in Korea. When I think about these people and the relationships I had with them, I realize they know me. They really know me.
Especially my best friends from Korea. They could tell by a tone or subtle body language what I was thinking or if I was uncomfortable, when others would never know. They understand my likes and dislikes and my hopes and my dreams and my quirks and desires. They know all my flaws and insecurities and love me and admire me regardless.
I realized that I do not have this with anyone here. I love my friends and family here, but after being away for so long I have changed and there is nobody that understands me like that here. This knowledge-this intimacy-came from spending a lot of time together and I have not had that with anyone here for years.
I only have two good friends in Boston (the rest are in New Hampshire and spread out all over the World), and although I am starting to make some new ones, they can't know me instantly. We can't share that kind of history immediately. I tired to explain this to someone the other night. It is great to have new friends and people you enjoy being around, but unfortunately intimacy takes time and there is nothing I can do to speed that process. The other tricky thing about new friends is that they come with their own lives full of people and obligations, and you have to be integrated into that slowly. That is hard.
Patience. I have to have patience. I have never been a patient person. This will be a great challenge for me. I have had fleeting thoughts of jumping a plane back to Korea or some other exotic destination. I have thought of running to another part of the country such as Florida or California. I then realize that I will have to deal with this in a new location. Even in Korea, if I stayed eventually my friends would leave. None of us are really permanent there. These are all only temporary solutions.
Realistically I have a lot going for me here. I have a great job where I get to make a difference. I have warm and caring colleagues that I have grown to care about very much. I have my family and I enjoy being with them. I do have good old friends here and some amazing prospects in new friends. I find I have to remind myself of these things on a regular basis.
I knew the adjustment would be difficult, but it has really just started to hit me recently. I am very lucky to have had such amazing friends and I know that they are my friends for life. One of my good friends from my adventures in Korea visited me in Boston in September and another one plans to visit next summer. I look forward to that visit and many more. I can meet them in all different parts of the world and, thanks to modern technology, I can talk to them on the phone and email them regularly. It is still hard to think of never getting to be part of their daily lives or to have them as part of mine. It is hard to imagine that we will never all be in the same room again and I will unlikely ever live in the same city with them again. These are things I still struggle with.
I know eventually I will have a group of people-of close friends-like that here. It is so hard to know there is nothing I can do to move it along. Waiting has never been my strong suit. I will be a good friend to those I have here and hope that eventually they will know me and love me, as my friends did in Europe and Korea.
If someone had told me a year ago that I could be surrounded by people and still feel loneliness, I would have called them crazy, and yet here I am lonely in a crowd of people. All I can do is acknowledge it and wait patiently for it to change.
This was a new feeling for me and one I admit that I never thought I could fall vulnerable to. I had certain ideas about what kind of people felt lonely. When I thought of loneliness I thought of desperate people searching for love-I have never cared if I find romantic love, in fact I go out of my way to avoid it. I thought of elderly people with no family who had lost all their friends to age or disease-I still have friends and family. I thought of the socially inept who never had romantic love or friends and family-I am a social butterfly. And yet, the feeling was definitely loneliness. How is that possible?
I started to examine this. I blamed my circumstances in Guatemala. Although, I meet people quite easily, I was there for four months. Most other people were there for a week or two at most. I was lucky in the beginning. I met several people who were there for five or six weeks. When they left the loneliness came. To add to that complication, the dangers abound for a woman traveling alone in Guatemala often did not allow me to go out unless I had an escort. That made things difficult when I was the only student living in my house. As much as I missed my friends in Korea, I started to look forward to returning to Boston. I know people in Boston. I would be close to my family.
When I returned to Boston I was overwhelmed. I had to buy a car, start a new job, find a place to live and was visiting my family in New Hampshire every other weekend trying to reconnect. I was so happy to be home and to be around my family. I was thrilled to get to know my nephew and to be more than a visitor again.
As time has gone by and I have become more settled in Boston, the loneliness has returned. At first I was frustrated and could not imagine how this could be. One weekend when I was feeling particularly lonely I went up to stay with my sister. Although I found some comfort in being with her and my brother-in-law, it did not stave off the feeling of loneliness. This has become increasingly frustrating for me, and I have had no choice but to examine it and try to understand the feelings.
I am so often surrounded by people, so how can I possibly still have bouts of feeling lonely? I started to think about the people I miss and what they represent. When I left Belgium I missed my two roommates and two very close friends the most. There are a few people in particular that I miss from my time in Korea. When I think about these people and the relationships I had with them, I realize they know me. They really know me.
Especially my best friends from Korea. They could tell by a tone or subtle body language what I was thinking or if I was uncomfortable, when others would never know. They understand my likes and dislikes and my hopes and my dreams and my quirks and desires. They know all my flaws and insecurities and love me and admire me regardless.
I realized that I do not have this with anyone here. I love my friends and family here, but after being away for so long I have changed and there is nobody that understands me like that here. This knowledge-this intimacy-came from spending a lot of time together and I have not had that with anyone here for years.
I only have two good friends in Boston (the rest are in New Hampshire and spread out all over the World), and although I am starting to make some new ones, they can't know me instantly. We can't share that kind of history immediately. I tired to explain this to someone the other night. It is great to have new friends and people you enjoy being around, but unfortunately intimacy takes time and there is nothing I can do to speed that process. The other tricky thing about new friends is that they come with their own lives full of people and obligations, and you have to be integrated into that slowly. That is hard.
Patience. I have to have patience. I have never been a patient person. This will be a great challenge for me. I have had fleeting thoughts of jumping a plane back to Korea or some other exotic destination. I have thought of running to another part of the country such as Florida or California. I then realize that I will have to deal with this in a new location. Even in Korea, if I stayed eventually my friends would leave. None of us are really permanent there. These are all only temporary solutions.
Realistically I have a lot going for me here. I have a great job where I get to make a difference. I have warm and caring colleagues that I have grown to care about very much. I have my family and I enjoy being with them. I do have good old friends here and some amazing prospects in new friends. I find I have to remind myself of these things on a regular basis.
I knew the adjustment would be difficult, but it has really just started to hit me recently. I am very lucky to have had such amazing friends and I know that they are my friends for life. One of my good friends from my adventures in Korea visited me in Boston in September and another one plans to visit next summer. I look forward to that visit and many more. I can meet them in all different parts of the world and, thanks to modern technology, I can talk to them on the phone and email them regularly. It is still hard to think of never getting to be part of their daily lives or to have them as part of mine. It is hard to imagine that we will never all be in the same room again and I will unlikely ever live in the same city with them again. These are things I still struggle with.
I know eventually I will have a group of people-of close friends-like that here. It is so hard to know there is nothing I can do to move it along. Waiting has never been my strong suit. I will be a good friend to those I have here and hope that eventually they will know me and love me, as my friends did in Europe and Korea.
If someone had told me a year ago that I could be surrounded by people and still feel loneliness, I would have called them crazy, and yet here I am lonely in a crowd of people. All I can do is acknowledge it and wait patiently for it to change.
posted by Unknown | 12:34 AM
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