The Real and Heavy Pain of Loneliness

I spent most of my twenties waltzing with loneliness. I loved going out but I also loved staying in. I was an introvert with extroverted tendencies. I never turned down an opportunity to party. But I also relished the isolation of my apartment. It was always a strange dance.

When I was out, I got on well with everyone and liked meeting new people. If I met someone who I felt was interesting, I would talk to them one on one most of the night (as most introverts and ambiverts tend to do). Sometimes my mind would get away from me though, as happens in manic-depression when you're not completely healthy--getting too excited, talking too fast, drinking too much, thinking too much.

When I was in a depression and out with friends, it was pure pain. I was a bear to bear around, sensitive to the slightest criticism, prone to tears, scared of crowds...it was not fun, and neither was I. Mental illness is a huge stress on relationships and friendships. People don't know how to handle you, you push them away when you want them close and pull at them to come close when you want to be alone. You make them walk on eggshells. You make loving you...tough.

When I was in, in my apartment, I was often happy to be alone. I did not feel a compulsive need to go out, was generally comfortable with myself. When I was manic, for my own good, I would shut up in my apartment during the worst of it. I figured, keep it contained. I would write ten hours a day and chain smoke cigarettes and watch movies and do projects and not sleep. I didn't need drugs or alcohol because the euphoria that comes with mania was enough, like something from another world.

When I was depressed, though, the pain was acute and searing. One Friday night after a crash (the crash into depression after a period of acute mania) I curled up into a ball and just laid for hours by the inside of the door, bereft of comfort. The pain was as physical as it was psychic, like stab wounds. It was the closest I had come to desiring death.

These moments are "never real, and always true," as the artist Antonin Artaud once said when asked about one of his drawings. The pain is real, it is not imagined, but it is a defection, the "flaw in love" as Andrew Solomon called depression. It is also a chicken and egg type scenario: the more depressed and inward you draw, the harder you are you love, the more you self-alienate, the harder it becomes to make and maintain friendships, etc. It takes a strong and sensitive person to love someone with mental illness because it is not easy.

But even if you are not mentally ill, being alone without a partner in this life is hard. I think that's important to acknowledge. There is an existential loneliness many people experience, not just on account of faith (we are not made for this world), but also in its absence (the God shaped hole that refused to be filled by anything but Him). "It is not good for man to be alone," the Lord says in Genesis (Gen 2:18), and "two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up" (Ecc 4:9-10).

When I had no job, no car, no mental equilibrium, and had just been hospitalized after getting hit by a car, I was at a low point. But that's exactly when I met my future wife. It was a good proving ground. Heck, if anyone can love and accept you in that state, that's worth it's weight in gold. We had also been praying for our respective spouses before we knew one another, and God in His omniscient ways, knew exactly what we both needed. Although one can be lonely with a spouse in the midst of a marriage, this has not been the case for me. My wife was a godsend, because in my case at least, the Scripture is true: It is not good for man to be alone.

My loneliness these days is not acute in the slightest. When I feel it most it feels like a dull headache, a heavy thud, and it is in the context of faith--although we have friends and support systems, partners and confidants, we all ultimately answer to God alone. We walk to Calvary alone. I know my God is with me, but even sometimes He can feel absent, not to mention those I used to be friends and party with and even those I used to worship with, though new friends have stepped in. When you start to really follow Christ, things in your life tend to prune and be culled. It is often during these times that consolation comes the way it came to Christ by way of Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus shoulder his cross on the way to his death.

Those who are in Christ still experience loneliness; it is a human emotion, a human experience. It can even work to our benefit spiritually, if it makes us more reliant on God and to love Him more. Christ experienced it as well in a way, in the Garden of Gethsemane, being sorrowful unto death while his friends slept in his hour of need.

But we can also do much as Christians to help be Simons to those who are in danger of collapsing under the cross of loneliness, to be Veronicas wiping the bloodied holy face, to be Johns and Marys at the foot of the Cross. We can visit those who are shut in, befriend those who could use a friend, write letters to prisoners...the options and opportunities are endless to bear one another's burdens. There are many who suffer, and there is much we can do, even if it is little things. We may not be able to take off the heavy blanket of loneliness in their lives, or even in our own, but we can rest knowing that He never leaves us nor forsakes us, even when He feels far from us. For the person of faith has the assurance of being a beloved child of God, who need not be anxious for anything, who can rest in the bosom of the Savior, remembering the words of the prophet Isaiah:

"Can a woman forget her nursing child 

And have no compassion on the son of her womb? 

Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. 

“Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; 

Your walls are continually before Me."

(Is 49:15-16)