Loneliness HURTS LIKE HELL To this day, I can clearly remember opening the door to my barely furnished apartment at 16 years old. As the key clicked left, I held my breath to prepare for that sinking feeling of loneliness. It was more like a gut-punch. In the most frank terms, loneliness fucking sucks. And it hurts like hell too. As much as you want to ignore it or deny it, it’s part of our human experience. And for some, like me, it can flare up like a bad case of acne-not so easy to cover up. During my junior year of high school, I was prematurely launched into adulthood when my father decided to live full-time on the other side of the world in Kazakhstan. Tough scenario for a juniorespecially when cell-phones were a luxury item. It was just me, my tv, and homework after school. I still remember eating bags of Rold Gold Pretzel Thins for dinner as a teen, knowing that the emptiness I felt was more unhealthy than the empty carbs. To be honest, it felt so unfair. But I forged through it. Yet, somehow that deep wounding has seemed to follow me into my adulthood. Some call it a “pain point.” To me, it’s more like an old scar- it’s been there for a while, sometimes you forget about it , but it just doesn't go away. Originally, my father was only supposed to work in Kazakhstan for a few months. At first, I moved in with my 20 year old brother in North Carolina and my dad would visit every three months. Then my brother needed to finish college in Florida. I was then given the option of boarding school or living with “Lisa,” a former client from my dad’s hair salon (I guess boundaries or consistency were not necessarily modeled in my childhood). 38
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Lisa was like an adoptive mother between step-moms who in a way found a rent-adaughter in me for the weekends. Let’s just say this relationship can be a bit complicated at times. It’s more of a blurry boundary issue that comes up for me. Regardless, when it was agreed that I would live with Lisa and her husband, Rob (who never wanted kids) I was relieved that I would at least get to live in Texas again. However, that plan quickly turned south after a year. After many marital arguments between Lisa and Rob over having a teen living in their home it was decided for me to move out. The next best option was to live in a small apartment near the high school where all my childhood friends attended. Wait. That's not even nearly half of the truth. What was really going on-was that my dad was living his best life as a single guy in Almaty, being a total narcissist, and selfishly enjoyed not having any kids to worry about. He wanted his freedom after being a single dad for so long. He thought that I would be fine living with family friends. Looking for a proper boarding school never really crossed his mind. So he basically dumped his parental responsibility onto the first person who was volunteering to take over.
experiences and relationships have helped me be a more empathic therapist, mom, and wife. Not always, because I have my “off” days where I regress back to that scared and needy 3 year old or that angry and resentful 16 year-old. Yet, today I see that being exposed to loneliness at various developmental stages of my life, laid out the foundation for this book. Ultimately, I have learned so much more about something so personal yet widely universal. According to a survey conducted by Cigna in 2018, three out of 5 adults in America, or 61%, reported that they sometimes or always feel lonely. Cigna’s survey showed that our loneliest population is our youngest adults, the “Z” generation, ages 18- 22 years old. I would argue that as early as 15, teens are starting to feel their first pangs of loneliness without even understanding what it really is. Most teens and young adults don’t realize that they are lonely.
The worst type of loneliness is when you can’t put your finger on what’s “wrong” while you’re surrounded by people, friends, family, or even strangers. Sometimes you just feel “stuck,” or invisible and disconnected. Like no one really knows you or has a clue of how much you are struggling inside. There are so many masks and personas that we hold I can’t blame Lisa because I’ve changed up to cover our psychological pain. And my narrative and the meaning I give my story. And after years of personal therapy, the more we try to hide it, the more it breeds. grief work, and spiritual healing--I don’t even blame my father anymore. Call it The pandemic magnified the pain of dharma, destiny, fate, or just plain life-loneliness that so many of us have been these early challenges, sense of feeling for a long time. In order to get to abandonment and loss, and early the solution end of this problem, I would introduction to loneliness; were all a part like to first start off by trying to disarm the of my character development. Those life shame that comes with it.
