I've been meaning to write this off my chest, but please first read the disclaimer on what loneliness really is before making any wrong assumptions or giving any unhelpful 'advice'. Consider this thread moreof a contemplatory aid to all those who experience the same.
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Disclaimer:
Firstly, it must be thoroughly established to this subject that loneliness does not entail either a lack of or inabillity to start social interactions, friends and or even relationships. It means that such interactions and relationships are at the least experienced as onesided, fruitless and meaningless.
Back when I was young, such never were' making it quite clear for me to make the distinction. One could therefor also notice melancholy in the issue.. but it doesn't have to be, there were and are ofcourse many who experience loneliness in childhood, and such can come and disappear many times during the years. Loneliness does not have to stay on us like an identity, while still likely having an impact.. sometimes creating feelings of distrust, reluctance and low self esteem.
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My personal experience in the broader sense;
As a young child, the neighbourhood was my personal domain in which I met all my friends, and my parents used to take me everywhere as we had a very big family with grandparents, aunts and uncles etc living all over the country, we drove there by car and so it was quite the caleidoscope for me as a child seeing so much different sights, peoples etc.. making impressions on me and giving me something to talk about to my friends, but it was always easy for me to reach out to strangers, making new friends (for a short time) wherever I was. When we had a vacation we would generally go to a beach resort in Castricum where we had a forest cabin, and every year we went there I'd make heaps of new friends.
When I was about 11 years old, my parents divorced and I quickly deteriorated when in middle school I was the target to be picked on by everyone after making the typical mistake of aiming low on my test (I was allowed to take a higher class than I did, thinking taking the lower class would make it easier to get through middle school but that landed me with all the low IQ bully type that enjoyed making my life hell)
Eventually I threw one of the bullies to the ground and was expelled (love how that goes right), started hanging out in the city, got sessions with counceling and they decided it was best to put me in a boarding school with troubled children who cut themselves, attacked others or were heavily abused and on medication. After that place I was sent instead to a boarding school with young delinquents and gangsters where I stayed for about 4-5 years (longest of any that did there so I became a bit of a veteran of the place.. :/ ) Then I was put into a "livinggroup" in another city, a few months in "crisis-centers" here and there, a adoptionhouse and by then things had changed in such a way that my mother temporarily took me back into her home..
During this time my father died (only 50y), I spent most my time hanging out with friends in the streets smoking weed until I had a puberty-breakdown over some random disagreement and kicked a tulip in two in my mothers garden that unbeknownst to me had been taken from my by also recently deceased grandmother's place as a memento mori. My mother threw me out again and I spent most of my time sleeping at friends or outside.
I got my first house which was a dump, my friends came over mainly to smoke weed there and watch weird movies, I slept on a couch during the day and woke up to them all sitting around me during the night, leaving my door unlocked like an idiot (sometimes even woke up to random people on psychadelic drugs standing in my house talking crazy
lol).. and was eventually after a weed-induced psychosis admitted to a ward for a short time until I was cleaned up again, then and there quitting both smoking and smoking weed (still did a few years later for about half a year again but quit that again then permanently).
Safe to say I was brought up in a psychological structure of 'excommunication, rejection, groundlessness and self neglect'.
In all those times I had never really worked on myself or my future, nor made any meaningful contacts that >>lasted<<. All my social interaction was either cut away when people went on on their trajection in the boarding schools.. I went to a different place, people died or were just random passer by's on drugs. It all.. conditioned into this.
After getting away from all the eventual drug-atmosphere.. I started working on myself, gradually' getting in physical shape by taking long walks or bikerides, eventually when I moved the the house I now live in even quitting videogames and -the internet- as a whole for 6 years (until 2020), yes you read that right. I wanted to connect with people in the real world again, --meaningfully--.
Thing is, the real world went the other way.. and deteriorated that meaningful contact more and more. You see.. I have never owned a smartphone, my last mobile phone was a model in 2001 (that is not a typo) which I got from my father, and only really used to call friends and my father with.. so when my father died.. and all my friends lived around me .. I had no use for it anymore.. all the time after having spent with an increasingly small circle aswell.
The world around me instead had morphed into a rather emptied out place.. with people exclusively communicating through the internet which I had just gotten rid of out of my life.
Let's fast forward a bit to not throw my entire life out here but.. post 2020 I've been spending all my time studying, firstly through libraries, using the computers there to look up information, and later both by ordering actual books for at home (where I to this day have no internet, nor want to) or at a family adress on the wifi where I utilize a laptop I bought for that purpose (which I'm also on right now..) somewhat ingrained into my life also with my photography of warhammer figurines ofcourse.. which I prior to that didn't even have any outlet for to share.
I really do not like to be isolated, but I do not find meaningful relations on the internet and never have other than what I experienced with my friends during my drugs period playing mmo's like ultima online with them.. but that aside..
I have become quite a learned man in the past 4 years, having done little more than studying.. and on the side lowering stress levels with painting mini's..
A stress that comes mainly from the loneliness of not having a meaningful personal relationship with anyone, no intimacy in the sense of having anyone that seeks me out, enjoys my company, has or shows any interest in me. And do note.. I am the most outgoing possible still, I am respectful, kind and helpful to everyone I meet, I am creative.. musical, calm, generally pleasant to be around as often noted by everyone I talk to, these are no claims to my ego.. All I care about eventually is being fruitful as would all I would presume.
I am not ugly or lazy, I set up projects, do charity work, have been told to have an attractive laugh. Young and Old tend to gravitate toward me.. except for the short.. relevant.. time and location. I have been told I am like a teacher, like an inspiration.. but when the day ends.. I am sitting at home alone and would I sit at home alone during the day not a person calls me (I do have a landline) or rings my doorbell. I am always the one visiting others, to me it is indeed one way.
It is true that I am the type that looks at the way the wind blows before trying to corner anyone into my life.. and perhaps I am making illusions on how interesting my life would be (and it certainly isn't pre-set to include people coming over having lived alone for 25 years now)..
I also don't mean to say that I necessarily want -many friends that constantly include me into plans-, just a single one to care would already be a pleasantry. And to admit.. the ultimate joy would be indeed a woman to start a family with, which I would not treat the same as my parents treat theirs.. I have grown to (as my charity work also includes childrens work) a passion of giving the young the attention they show to lack.. and I understand very well the psychology of my own lacking.. to want to do better, but also with such a family.. have something that doesn't leave me, that -is- lasting and meaningful.
I have realised that .. many undertakings (charity work included).. such as hobbies.. are substitutes or surrogates to my desire of creating such..
Painting mini's being a sort of worldbuilding, often likened to the psychology of having something one can control'..
And worldbuilding I did with it, settling on many an idea revolving around composition.. like composing a working family would.
And no.. that does not mean that my mini's are like my family.. it's not that bad. But they are like the children of my intent, my unraveling, my idealism.
Perhaps painting mini's has given me some sense of control over all such emotions that are sometimes better and sometimes worse.. and especially when I feel depressed.. generally when I've had too little sunlight and means to distract myself from the loneliness.. it helps me recallibrate a bit into a different universe, slowly (re)structuring whatever unit I work on. Substitute or no.
I don't like to live from substitute to substitute, I really don't. I hope oneday I don't have to go out of my way to find a more fruitful life, which I don't as going out of my way feels rather unnatural. I don't present myself as something I'm not.
Anyway, perhaps this all feels familiar to some and can function as an introspection, or the trigger to start one.
Kind regards.
-Leopold Helveine. (pseudonym
)
