Loneliness - by Kathy Saville
Loneliness is a complex emotion – it’s a feeling of not being connected with others when we want to be. If we don’t want to be connected then it’s solitude.
Solitude doesn’t have the negative connotations that loneliness does. Solitude is about choice – loneliness is about not belonging – there goes with it the feeling of worthlessness - You are not worth connecting with, therefore you have been left out of the herd, there is a whiff of it being your fault, if you are on your own, then you must’ve deserved it. That links in with another very difficult emotion, shame.
And I think it is shame that stops people from owning up to loneliness and maybe because of that, from asking for help from others, or from professionals about it.
If you are very old or ill and you cannot get out , then there is more empathy and more understanding, expectation even, that people may therefore be lonely. But if you are young , fit, well and you are lonely – then there is the question – voiced or not – what is wrong with you?
And if that question is voiced by others it is also voiced by yourself. What is wrong with me why am I not part of the herd?
I think loneliness drives people to drink to despair to take their own lives, I think it’s vastly underrated and seriously overlooked, And I think it’s becoming a bigger and scarier problem in our ever larger, ever more unconnected, faster paced world.