The Fine Line Between Loneliness and Solitude
“In old age, I had to come to terms with the loneliness I’d felt all my life.”
This is not me…but this where I find my solitude…reading, research, and writing.
Earlier this week, my husband pointed out a headline in the news, Loneliness is the new silent killer, and as deadly as smoking. Worth considering as a blog post, he asked?
I had already been thinking about loneliness this week. On Monday, I had a conversation with a friend about married women being less lonely. When you have a good marriage, you are blessed with the support and friendship of a spouse. I worry at times how I will cope with loneliness if I end up a widow.
I remember the loneliness of my childhood, adolescence, and young adult years. Like the lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, “I too have known loneliness. I too have known what it is to feel misunderstood, rejected, and suddenly not at all beautiful.” There was a loneliness in always being chosen last in gym, not being asked to the prom, and being the only one of your friends not to have a boyfriend. While I now embrace my uniqueness, when younger, I felt different, never quite like everyone else. I have felt this repeatedly throughout my life.
Sometimes I wonder if my solitude was birthed from loneliness? There is a fine line between loneliness and solitude. Over the years, I found companionship in my family, a handful of good friends, books, writing, and nature. Mary Oliver’s poem continues with the words, "Oh, mother earth, your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. It has saved my life to know this. Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.”Nature has been a consistent comfort all my life.
This week, several e-newsletters I subscribe to also mentioned loneliness.
Psyche offered a guide to feeling less lonely as we get older. The guide offers suggestions to combat loneliness as well as research and resources.
In her last blog post, Vicki Robin wrote, “Ageism is a thing. It’s in me as I dust blusher on my hollowing cheeks for a Zoom interview. It’s in me as I let my fears speak, fears of being alone, in pain, unable to take care of myself. Fears of disappearing, inch by inch, from the churn of society creating itself fresh in each moment. Facing into this with curiosity and acceptance is big work.”
Then, Sari Botten, shared a link in Oldster Magazine to an essay written by Sharon Butala for The Walrus. The tagline read, “I’m eighty now and I live alone, a situation so common that you might even say loneliness goes hand in hand with being old, that the old are experts in loneliness.”
The essay captured everything I feel about loneliness. Butala’s words brought back childhood memories, as well as my fear of being a lonely old woman. I was so impacted by her words, I immediately ordered her book, This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life. Here are some quotes from her essay that echoed the thoughts swirling around in my head:
There is… a stigma attached to being lonely—being lonely must be your own fault because you’re an inferior person—while, if you claim to enjoy solitude, you are seen as not of the typical run of humanity and are admired, even while being looked at skeptically, because in our society, preferring to be alone isn’t seen as “normal” or well adjusted.
As an old person, I live in the midst of a community of loneliness—admittedly a contradiction in terms: How do the lonely make a community and remain lonely?
When I first became aware of myself as old, and when both of my parents, two of my four sisters, and my husband had died… leaving me pretty much permanently alone—in the physical sense, at the very least—I began to feel like the last member of my tribe left on earth. For the first time, I understood, in the deepest part of my being, what the true loneliness of orphans and of those who define themselves or are defined by society as “other,” as not belonging, really is. I began to understand why the elderly are too often lonely people.
I was drawn to her words about the times she forgot about loneliness. They made me smile and and nod my head in agreement:
I have at times forgotten all about loneliness and, if asked, would have offered denial. My goodness, it’s hard to be lonely in the middle of sex: the act occupies you rather fully, at least for a few minutes. And I wasn’t lonely giving birth, although I was frightened, in pain, and perhaps indignant that this was bloody well asking too much of me. Or when I held my dearest preschooler tightly in my arms. Moments, flashes, the occasional long afternoon in the countryside, when dreaming, when lost in my work, in the “zone” athletes talk about, when struggling to understand an idea, whenever I am focused on something. Nor was I lonely when I was walking on the prairie alone and my consciousness moved out beyond its normal limits and allowed me a larger sense of the world.
I have not always felt loneliness, but often enough that I worry about my later years. This year we are moving to our island home, an acreage snuggled in amongst farms, with no close neighbours. I look forward to puttering in the garden, writing in my nook, and heading off on adventures with my husband. But our home is also isolated. A car is necessary to go to the village for groceries. Only basic medical care is available on the island. We will need to go to Vancouver Island to access specialists and hospitals. And our children do not live near. This will be fine initially, while we are still healthy and mobile, but a plan for the future will be necessary. We have a five-year plan, and then we will re-evaluate. I expect that eventually, we will move to Vancouver Island, to a walkable town that offers much that an older person will need, both in terms of support and a social network. I am hopeful that stepping into this stage of my life with eyes wide open and a well-thought-out plan will help alleviate the loneliness that is too often associated with aging.
Are you lonely? Like me, do you worry about loneliness as you age? Have you thought about what you can do to combat loneliness as you age?