Sometimes, by best friend and I end up in different places – Different zip codes. It’s not because we want to or choose to, it’s just the nature of trying to get by and survive in America in 2013.
It isn’t her fault and it isn’t my fault – It just…is; so, we both do the best we can to stay “connected,” remember the “bigger picture” and relish the time that we do have together – None of which is always effective against a thing called “loneliness.”
And it isn’t very hard – And it doesn’t take very long – For me to start talking to myself; worse, it doesn’t take very long at all to start listening to myself, and beginning to believe what I hear.
Not good! But it could be a whole lot worse, because I know that it will end and that there is somebody out there who cares – Deeply.
Last week I went on about loneliness. Here’s what I said:
“Because eventually, if we make ourselves do something, we’ll rejoin the world and we’ll discover that people do care, because we started caring. Think about that.
We started caring – For ourselves. And it’s not a big step from there to caring about somebody or something else, maybe people and things that we’ve never heard of.
‘That sounds HARD.’ It is, because you’ve become your own best friend and your own worst enemy, so you’re going to have to start listening to somebody else. You’re going to have to do something about you.
Because loneliness kills – Trying doesn’t.”
I was then, and I am now, talking about genuine, extended loneliness – Being alone a lot, for a long time; clearly, that doesn’t describe me, but it does describe a lot of people that I’ve seen and known over the years, and life can get very hard, very quickly – Because all we have to think about is us:
We reflect ourselves and dissect ourselves. We over-examine, over-think, over-analyze – We begin to take ourselves VERY seriously! And that’s almost never good, because we “should have” done better and we “could have” done better and we “would have” done better – Shoulda, coulda, woulda – Over and over and over. No wonder nobody loves us (or even likes us!) – WE don’t even like us! Because we shoulda, coulda, woulda.
Or “shouldn’t have” or “couldn’t have” or “wouldn’t have” – It doesn’t matter, because here we are. Here I am, being very much alone, and getting weirder by the moment.
So, what I said last week, and am finally getting around to saying again today, is that we have to do SOMETHING! We have to make ourselves get up, get dressed, go out and do SOMETHING! Something that involves us being around other humans: Maybe it’s loitering in the “produce” section or taking up yoga – SOMETHING.
And if we’re smart, we’ll pick some SOMETHINGS that involve doing something for other living things: maybe it’s volunteering with an organization that does good things or walking dogs who live in shelters or visiting that old friend in the nursing home who may not even recognize you.
Maybe it’s tutoring kids, or talking to somebody to find out about what it would take to tutor kids or maybe it’s just visiting somebody who’s lonely, because here’s something pretty strange: Lonely people tend to know lonely people (Oh, Yes, you do!) – It’s a radar! We can feel it! We know it when we see it, because we see it in the mirror.
Do SOMETHING! And do it FOR somebody! Or someTHING that will do something for somebody.
Force yourself – An act of will – Because you will NOT “…feel like it.” What you’ll “feel like” is doing what you’ve been doing which is being alone and listening to yourself, because (often) what’s underneath loneliness is fear, and what we’re afraid of is finding out that what we’ve been telling ourselves is true: That we really are bad, useless, have nothing to contribute to anything or anybody and deserve exactly what we’re getting, which is nothing.
But, don’t over-analyze it! Who cares?? It doesn’t matter! Do SOMETHING! Start thinking about somebody else, even if you’ve never met that “somebody else,” because if we start thinking about somebody else, we will STOP thinking about us! – And, Lord knows, we’ve been doing more-than-enough of that!
The “best time” to do SOMETHING will not be tomorrow and it won’t be Monday and it won’t be Saturday afternoon, after you’ve defrosted the freezer – Again. The best time to do SOMETHING is right now – Yes! Right now! Put down the paper, brush your teeth, get dressed and get your **** out the door and do SOMETHING! Do it with somebody or for somebody – Animals count.
I don’t care if you’re shy and I don’t care if this sounds scary; look: You know darned-good-and-well that plenty of people helped you along the way, and there were plenty of times when they didn’t have to – They just did. You owe this, so get out the door and go “pay up!” Right now.
If you do this – I mean, really do this, honestly – And you don’t feel better, then come back home and write me an angry e-mail about how I shoot my mouth off about things I don’t know anything about; then, I’ll e-mail you back, defending myself – Then, you’ll e-mail me about being defensive and I’ll e-mail you, defending my defensiveness, then…
Funny, how that works…
No comments:
Post a Comment