Loneliness Lacunas

Lacuna (n) - An unfilled space, Gap

Loneliness is a strange emotion. Has a friend of yours ever told you they feel lonely? Have you ever told a friend you feel lonely? What was the response that was received to that statement? I bet that it didn’t quite fit as a response, right? As if they didn’t understand what you meant by lonely, but when you try to explain it, you can’t, there doesn’t seem to be any word which quite fits what you intended to say and it’s frustrating.

I’ve stopped using the word lonely to describe myself now, it has too many assumptions based around it. My friends would tell me that I could always talk to them, or I could go get a girlfriend, but that’s not what I meant by lonely. It was more that I wanted to talk to someone else, who I didn’t know. I wanted to be able to message someone whenever and be able to meet up with them for a drink or a game of D&D or whatever, but not have to have any other relation with them. A no strings attached friendship, strangers with benefits.

If you’ve managed to read this far without thinking I sound like a crazy person then you’re giving me far more credit than I am. I also lament slightly that I’m not able to get an accurate statistic on whether or not other people get this Loneliness Lacuna or if it really is just me who has any clue what I’m on about. If there are more people out there, don’t worry, you’re now lonely in one less way than you were before.

I want to try and put my finger on the different types of loneliness I feel upon occasions. I’m no linguist, by any means, so expect some made up words in the following. I’ll also mention that these are, in no particular order, simply popping up as and when I think of them. Do I sound like a game show host yet?

First one I can think of is… well actually, it’s pretty much what I described above, but there’s a word count and I don’t know what I’m at, so I’ll just go into the second one; the First Encounter Loneliness. I started experiencing a lot of this when I left my retail jobs, which I expect had something to do with it in the first place. I can’t really think of an analogy for it, which sucks, because I rely on those for pretty much everything, but the best way I can describe it as missing that ice cream flavour, which you’ve never even heard of. Like having a craving for something unknown. As I mentioned, I was working in retail prior to this, which meant I was meeting new people every day, and loved it.

The third of the Loneliness Lacunas is the one I felt after I left school. Now, I was not one of the popular kids at school, but I had a close group of friends who I got along very well with, but when time came for the end of our school careers, I stayed in the place we were at, and nigh on everyone else moved away. I made a new friend in my form group, and one of my friends from previous years was still around, but was significantly smarter than I, and hence spent a lot more time doing work. I was suddenly surrounded by about 50 other kids who were having a great time, hanging out, talking, helping each other with the work, and I was overwhelmed by the work I had, and was unassisted in doing so. This is what I now call my Frienvy Loneliness (get it, cos it’s friend and envy? I’m not funny, get over it.) Frienvy Loneliness sucks sweaty scorpion balls, because it’s all the punch of normal loneliness, with the added kick of being surrounded by people making relationships which would still be going years later. Thanks for keeping me updated with that, Facebook, definitely what I log on to see, not in it for the memes at all.

So at this point, I’m just gonna cop out and start describing all of the types of loneliness I’ve felt over time, because as it turns out, this is really cathartic. In which vien I will finally discuss the two types which people always assume you are talking about, starting with Relationship Loneliness. This is an odd one for me to talk about, as I’ve been on so many dates in my adult life that you could only count them if you had at least one finger, and the only relationship I’ve had was when I was 15, so a literal baby. Despite this, I have still managed to let people of the opposite sex fuck me over (not literally) enough times that I’ve now stopped worrying about it. What I mean by this is that I know I will always be single and will die a virgin, and I am okay with this. To be honest, looking at what relationships do to the other people I’ve seen in them, I feel much happier knowing that I’m safe from all that bullshit. That said, I do still get the occasional feeling that it would be nice to have something like that sometimes, just a reassurance that if the house was broken into, I would have someone to provide a soft landing for me at the ground under the window.

The other one is general loneliness, of not having many friends around, or nobody to talk to, whatever, we all know it at this point, right? If you don’t, stop reading articles so that you can laugh at the pain of others you sociopathic dickhead. I’m kidding that’s like my favourite pastime. Off topic, no friends, right. So this one is similar to Frienvy as described above, but I’d argue not quite as bad, as at least you ain’t getting kicked while you’re already down. That said, both this one and that, are not quite as bad as the other.

The other being complete loneliness where you actually have literally no friends at all whatsoever. If this is you, please just… there are plenty of TED talks about how to be successful in a social environment. Watch them, then join a martial arts club. Or something that you’re interested in, but if in doubt, I am of the opinion that everyone can benefit from learning a martial art.

And now we come to the weird one. I feel like most types of loneliness must have been felt by people all through history, but this one is new to the technological communicators of the modern age. I know this because there is literally no other time in history, that someone could be lonely while having literal thousands of people they can talk to at any time. I read somewhere once that if you brought someone from the past to the present, the hardest thing to explain would be that 77% of people living in america hold in their hands a device which is capable of instantaneously giving you the answer to any mathematical problem, most scientific journals, entire stories played out in moving images, and contacting almost anyone instantaneously. And the thing they would find most difficult to understand is why we use this magical device to look at pictures of cats trying to eat burgers. It’s bonkers, right? But it means that I only see my closest friends maybe four times a year, the rest of the time they’re in a completely different part of the country. This has meant that although I love them to bits, and would like to think they are all I need in my friendships… it simply isn’t enough.

We need direct physical interaction with other human beings in order to thrive. Despite our communicative potential on the internet, we can still be lonely while messaging a dozen people if we haven’t seen another amicable human face directly in some time. The problem we have as lonely people is that nobody thinks about what the meaning of the word lonely actually is. It isn’t just a word to mean you haven’t seen your friends in a while, it’s a word which can mean a variety of things, but all of them share a common medicine. Understand that loneliness does not mean that you need to go out there and get into a romance, it just means you need to build a relationship. Even if you simply go out there and sit in a cafe reading a book, or if you go to a bar and talk to some people you’ll never see again, that’s enough, that’s the cure for loneliness.

Technology has given us the ability to chose who we connect with, and has blinded us to the most obvious choice of who is directly around us. We are too focused now on the proper way of talking to people to actually go and try talking to them. If someone starts a conversation with you, even though you don’t know them, embrace the opportunity to practice camaraderie, and it may be the last time you feel lonely in a long time.

I mean that, or someone make something like Tinder for people who aren’t looking for a relationship or sex. Like a coffee mate Tinder. That could also work.

Best wishes from A Casual Virgin, willing Stranger With Benefits