Loneliness
Loneliness is a very strange emotion, it exist only in your head and is always in relationship to society standards, for instance if you are over 30 and you have no boyfriend you will feel alone at a wedding, if you are 50 and divorced without kids or the kids are gone, you will also feel lonely at family functions, even if hundreds of people parade around you, the social context seems to dictate what is expected from the individual and if you are different, don't fit the norm, you'll find yourself avoiding any group celebrations. Weekends are particularly hard
because your mind plays all sort of games, it feels like the whole planet knows you are alone and everybody is making fun of you, when in reality the contrary is happening, nobody cares if you exist or die and that's what really hurts you want to reach out but people are busy and indifferent to your pain. Again all happens in your head, when you have a close friend you can count on, meaning you can call this person at any moment, when you need to talk, you don’t feel alone. Loneliness is directly connected to trust, if you have a person you can honestly and openly communicate with and express how lonely you feel, that in itself is healing and you no longer feel lost and sad. That unfortunately wasn’t my case, my life was destined to face long periods of isolation and learning how to deal with it felt like a matter of life and death, my mental health depended on it, I learned how to keep my mind occupied away from the subject of loneliness because physically there was nothing I could do, I was isolated and that was a fact. I found out cleaning and organizing was a great therapy, I didn’t know why but it made me feel good. Exploring new places was also great, for some reason I never felt alone during these activities. Another thing I discovered is that bad relationships make you feel lonely, while you might be physically sharing the space with another person it doesn’t necessarily mean there is a connection, quite the contrary being surrounded with the wrong crowd will make you feel inadequate and more isolated, trying to emotionally connect without reciprocity is very painful and can leave you exhausted. So I let it go, decided no to pursue closeness, instead I focused on engaging in activities that made me happy no matter how trivial, I also directed my attention to the people around me who genuinely care for me and understood me and avoided people who made me feel abandoned. After changing my behavior I started to feel emotionally happier and mentally healthier.
Dora Martinez
amateur writer, digital artist, fashion designer, entrepreneur
