Solitude and loneliness can co-exist in Daydreaming on the Porch

I had a bit of a jolt when I read something a fellow diarist posted a few days ago. I thought, “Is this really what it means to live alone when you strip away all the pretense and rationalization?” After all, we’re social creatures and we need others like we need food, water and air, even it they drive us crazy, right?

I think what I read was more like an online cry of anguish, coming at wit’s end than anything else. And re-reading it gave me a flashback to a near-empty apartment in Mississippi almost 40 years ago when’ve had just started Ph.D studies in communications. Irony there because at one point in the Fall of 1985, in that small city, in that dreary apartment with a bed, card table, lamp and TV set, I felt the most profound loneliness I had ever known. Not blissful solitude away from annoying people, but loneliness so deep it seemed like a black hole. The kind of loneliness where you cry out silently in pain and anguish. And yet each day I went to my classes, both the one’s I was taking for my degree requirements, and the ones I was teaching as a teaching assistant and later instructor. I managed. I coped I took walks. I didn’t know any neighbors at the apartment complex. Didn’t befriend any at the university that first year. Did everything alone. My fault? Maybe. A lifetime in the making? More likely. I was 35 at the time and in the middle of the decade (1974-1994) that I refer to as my time of wandering in the wilderness. Yes, it was every bit a full ten years. I didn’t smoke, drink or use drugs. I clung time and again to the resuscitating powers of Nature.

So the diarist wriote this:

I’ve been living alone for most of my life, so what does this actually mean? It means something, but when I go to bed, alone, watch TV, alone, go for a walk, alone (or with my Mom), read a book, alone, order pizza, alone, take a nap, alone, wake up, alone, have my coffee, alone, see a doctor, alone, write about my day, alone, think about life’s mystery, alone, laugh, alone, cry, alone, eat, alone, etc. I mean, okay? It’s nice to talk to people online, but I’m still doing life ALONE.

As for doing everything alone, I relate to every bit of that and much more that’s implied. I constantly reach out to people online, in virtual reality, in emails, texts and here in a writing community called Prosebox. But as the writer says, “I’m still doing life ALONE.” Being alone all the time (or most of the time) borders on extreme solitude, but solitude as choice. Are there alternatives to this type of self-enforced solitude. Of course. But I choose not to avail myself of them. At my age I’m more or less content with being by myself all the time.

Perhaps this is just the way things are and always will be. How much am am going to change at 71? I’ve reached the plateau, but there are still some mountains in the distance.

The past two days, I saw or talked to no one except my brother for a few minutes. Yesterday, I started to feel depressed sitting in a chair in my storage unit surveying all the boxes of stuff that have to be dealt with at some point. All day I spoke to no one. However, it’s still Spring. I got out and walked. It was cool and sunny. I felt my spirits lift. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Solitude, in the beneficial sense of the word, has nothing to do with loneliness unless you let it. What this is all leading up to is that I much prefer to do things alone than with others and always have. I like the freedom to simply be by myself and do what I want. Over a lifetime one gets very comfortable with that, even if at times I have regrets that things didn’t turn out differently.

I am who I am, and near the end of life I am not at all surprised that this is the way life turned out. Not exactly a loner, because I can be quite gregarious, but someone who relishes his solitude and knows very little other than that. I am engaged with the world, but I prefer to keep it at arms length. Decades ago, I made five solo road trips around the US by car. This was the 80s, I was still young, and during those long and life-enhancing trips by myself, I wasn’t lonely. I felt liberated.

Here are the words to my favorite Simon and Garfunkel song. I embrace it for its honesty and truth, but I also shudder sometimes when I see how closely I fit into that lyrical narrative. It’s always been a song that’s a little too close for comfort. But it keeps me grounded

Am a Rock

A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow
I am a rock I am an island
I’ve built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship friendship causes pains
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain
I am a rock I am an island
Don’t talk of love
Well I’ve heard the word before
It’s sleeping in my memory
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried
I am a rock I am an island
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me
I am a rock I am an island
And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries

Songwriter: Paul Simon

Last updated May 16, 2022