It rains on and on. I've made very little money at the restaurant this week, largely due to the persistent deluge. (Also due to managerial skills that regard waitresses as entirely expendable.)
After months of no rain at all, to the point that the grass was brown and parched, the downpour hasn't stopped for more than four hours at a time for week now. I hear there's flooding other places – here the riverbank is mostly pretty high, so I think things are fine. But the air is heavy and mosquito-filled, and though the sound of the rain is in its way soothing, it is also implacable and somehow lonely.
My neighbors are standing outside in it, their hair long and stringy, their jeans hanging past their feet with the weight of the water. I don't know why they're out there, but something is going on over there. A moving truck came to their house today, completely to my surprise. They've shown no signs of house-moving before – no signs in the front yard, no marshalling of possessions or large-scale box-unloading, no yard sales. Just normal operations until the truck today, and now they stand in the rain, the wife with her baby on her hip.
If I knew them at all, I might go over and ask – but I don't know them. I don't know any of my neighbors. I haven't, really, since I was very little, when I was on friendly terms with most of my street. On Grandin Rd. we knew a few people – more right when we moved in – but that decreased as time went on. And as a student and young adult, I've known almost no one. (Not even in dorms. I knew my suite-mates, of course, but one year I didn't even know two of the girls who shared a bathroom with me.) I am not good at this kind of approach, and it is probably to my detriment.
I've been thinking a lot about this storyrecently, which confirms exactly what most of us I think have felt throughout my lifetime – people are getting lonelier. And I mean really lonelier. Not just temporarily, not just "why don't people gather together for singalongs anymore" nostalgic lonelier, but really killingly lonely.
The figure that makes me the saddest is the one the Post put right at the beginning – that over a fourth of Americans surveyed had no one to confide in. What do you do with no one to confide in? Die, I think. Or feel like dying. I am entirely convinced that the great majority of people simply cannot survive without some kind of support when things are rough. It might be religious support or drinking-buddy support or hug and sob-story support, but virtually everybody needs something.
But I think – as does the scientist at the end of the article – that we are being tragically socialized to think we don't need that after all. Or that we're already getting it – by watching Dr. Phil, or by going to workplace baby showers or something. But we aren't. There's a very big difference between a workplace friendship of conversations about kids or sports and a real friendship you can turn to in times of trouble.
And it's so easy in our society to wake up one day and realize that real friendships have eluded you somehow. You've moved away from your family or they've moved away from you. You don't know how to meet people. You don't work with anyone you can be real friends with. You don't know your neighbors. You've lost touch with old friends. What on earth are we supposed to do?
"Try harder" is an easy thing to say, but not so easy to do – for me, anyway, making friends is extremely difficult. I'm coming more and more to realize that I will have to take extreme measures to ensure that I don't let the loneliness overpower me. By "extreme," I mean things like living with friends at all costs (as I have done here – and my goodness, has it paid off) and calling people up relentlessly (still working on this one) and even moving cities if I have to. I think the first consideration in the rest of my life may be maintaining social networks as best I can.
Because loneliness can kill me. I'm pretty convinced of that. Like this unexpected deluge, I can look up any given day to find out that loneliness has moved in on the parched ground on which I dwell and flooded me entirely – and that's very difficult to get out of. Not impossible. Not hopeless. But hard.
And it isn't just me – so many of my friends and family are struggling. Part of it is our time in life. 20-something really sucks (although the second half of twenty-something seems to me to suck less). I hear 30-something is better. And my nuclear family has itself fallen on some rough times.
But I’m lucky – I have them, my family and friends. And although I'm not so good at keeping them, I am trying. Any contact with the people I care about is so important, so welcome. (I welcome you – whoever you are sharing in my confidences. Why else do I keep this diary but to serve as one more weapon in the war against loneliness?)
We live in a lonely time. It isn't just a whiny cliche. And I don't think it's right to blame it on television – it's something about our society itself, and about the way we ration and spend time. But we can fight it. We have to. I'm here – you're here. Let's not end up alone.
After months of no rain at all, to the point that the grass was brown and parched, the downpour hasn't stopped for more than four hours at a time for week now. I hear there's flooding other places – here the riverbank is mostly pretty high, so I think things are fine. But the air is heavy and mosquito-filled, and though the sound of the rain is in its way soothing, it is also implacable and somehow lonely.
My neighbors are standing outside in it, their hair long and stringy, their jeans hanging past their feet with the weight of the water. I don't know why they're out there, but something is going on over there. A moving truck came to their house today, completely to my surprise. They've shown no signs of house-moving before – no signs in the front yard, no marshalling of possessions or large-scale box-unloading, no yard sales. Just normal operations until the truck today, and now they stand in the rain, the wife with her baby on her hip.
If I knew them at all, I might go over and ask – but I don't know them. I don't know any of my neighbors. I haven't, really, since I was very little, when I was on friendly terms with most of my street. On Grandin Rd. we knew a few people – more right when we moved in – but that decreased as time went on. And as a student and young adult, I've known almost no one. (Not even in dorms. I knew my suite-mates, of course, but one year I didn't even know two of the girls who shared a bathroom with me.) I am not good at this kind of approach, and it is probably to my detriment.
I've been thinking a lot about this storyrecently, which confirms exactly what most of us I think have felt throughout my lifetime – people are getting lonelier. And I mean really lonelier. Not just temporarily, not just "why don't people gather together for singalongs anymore" nostalgic lonelier, but really killingly lonely.
The figure that makes me the saddest is the one the Post put right at the beginning – that over a fourth of Americans surveyed had no one to confide in. What do you do with no one to confide in? Die, I think. Or feel like dying. I am entirely convinced that the great majority of people simply cannot survive without some kind of support when things are rough. It might be religious support or drinking-buddy support or hug and sob-story support, but virtually everybody needs something.
But I think – as does the scientist at the end of the article – that we are being tragically socialized to think we don't need that after all. Or that we're already getting it – by watching Dr. Phil, or by going to workplace baby showers or something. But we aren't. There's a very big difference between a workplace friendship of conversations about kids or sports and a real friendship you can turn to in times of trouble.
And it's so easy in our society to wake up one day and realize that real friendships have eluded you somehow. You've moved away from your family or they've moved away from you. You don't know how to meet people. You don't work with anyone you can be real friends with. You don't know your neighbors. You've lost touch with old friends. What on earth are we supposed to do?
"Try harder" is an easy thing to say, but not so easy to do – for me, anyway, making friends is extremely difficult. I'm coming more and more to realize that I will have to take extreme measures to ensure that I don't let the loneliness overpower me. By "extreme," I mean things like living with friends at all costs (as I have done here – and my goodness, has it paid off) and calling people up relentlessly (still working on this one) and even moving cities if I have to. I think the first consideration in the rest of my life may be maintaining social networks as best I can.
Because loneliness can kill me. I'm pretty convinced of that. Like this unexpected deluge, I can look up any given day to find out that loneliness has moved in on the parched ground on which I dwell and flooded me entirely – and that's very difficult to get out of. Not impossible. Not hopeless. But hard.
And it isn't just me – so many of my friends and family are struggling. Part of it is our time in life. 20-something really sucks (although the second half of twenty-something seems to me to suck less). I hear 30-something is better. And my nuclear family has itself fallen on some rough times.
But I’m lucky – I have them, my family and friends. And although I'm not so good at keeping them, I am trying. Any contact with the people I care about is so important, so welcome. (I welcome you – whoever you are sharing in my confidences. Why else do I keep this diary but to serve as one more weapon in the war against loneliness?)
We live in a lonely time. It isn't just a whiny cliche. And I don't think it's right to blame it on television – it's something about our society itself, and about the way we ration and spend time. But we can fight it. We have to. I'm here – you're here. Let's not end up alone.
Labels: lonliness, spirit of the age
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