Loneliness and the Lies We Tell
When we first told the family we were moving away, my mum told me “you’ll be lonely”. And of course, from that point on, I was adamant I wouldn’t be. It’s a question I’ve been asked every now and then on Instagram: ‘how do you deal with the loneliness working by yourself?’
My refrain has always been “I’m not lonely. I don’t need to be around people”. Which in a lot of ways is true – I’m an introvert and have never been someone who wants a big group of friends or for whom a weekend just isn’t a weekend without a social event. Plus, I speak to people all the time – I have client calls every week that really take up most of the energy I have for other humans.
I have enough human contact. I’m not lonely. I’m not.
I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching over the last few months about the direction of the business and shifting what I do to get more balance. I’d been focused on that being the big problem in my life, and thought that once I’d solved it the yellow brick road to joy would appear. What actually happened is the spotlight swung around and landed on what, arguably, was the actual problem.
All this time I’ve been adamant I’m not lonely; I’ve been banging the drum so methodically that it became the only truth I could accept. I didn’t need to go to that event because I wasn’t lonely, didn’t need to arrange that meet up or send that message or make that effort because I wasn’t lonely. Only someone who was lonely would need to do that, and that is not me, no siree!
Of course, “I’m not lonely” wasn’t the truth. It was a lie. It was a cruel lie that twisted like brambles into every element of my life and sabotaged the things I really needed in order to perpetuate itself. I know I’ve known the truth for a while but there were easier things to confront first than this mantra I’ve worn like armour for 18 months.
The root of my uncertainty the last few months hadn’t been just the business model; that was a symptom. It was the total imbalance in my life. Five days a week I only speak to one other human, and that’s Dan (and by the way, of course client calls don’t count as social interaction). I craved impromptu coffee dates with nearby friends, afternoon trips to exhibitions, a good gossip, dinner parties, evening classes, joy.
Although I am not always unhappy, if you ask me whether I’m living the life I want to live and being the person I want to be, the answer would have to be no.
So now there is another thing to fix, and we’re looking at houses and locations with a view to moving closer to those things I crave. But the point is, I would have saved myself months had the big lie not stood in the way of dealing with the root of the problem.
I don’t think these lies start off as bad; we tell them to protect ourselves from the unfaceable truth, a little short term respite from having to face something hard. But they take root and grow like a weed so that soon we lose control of them, and subsequently lose sight of the truth. And you can’t start to fix something unless you’re starting from the truth.
I think you’ll already know your lie. Maybe it follows one of these formulas:
“I can’t do … until I’ve got …”
“That won’t happen for me because …”
“I am …” / “I am not …”
“I don’t know …”
The lie feels safe and cosy but ultimately it’s stifling your oxygen and shutting out your hope. As long as you keep believing the lie you’ll keep not getting what you need. For me, I read a novel that affected me so deeply I had no choice but to pull apart what my intuition was really saying to me; what those emotions were trying to point out I was missing. Confront the lie by immersing yourself in the thing it’s stopping you doing; when it warns you not to read that article stick up two fingers and read it anyway, write a list of all the reasons why you can, give yourself permission to admit you were wrong. Action is always the way out.
When you’ve fought to pull up that thorny weed and you’re scratched and sweaty from the effort, you’ll sit back and breathe, for what feels like the first time in a long time. While truth can be painful, it can also be freeing. No more pretences, no more hiding, no more justifying. Just a clear (although not necessarily easy) path to more joy and a return to feeling in control of your own self.
On the other side of the lie, is peace.
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