It's nearly Loneliness Awareness Week, though it's not a feeling that's familiar to loners like me - Gaby Soutar
Rather than a murder, I think I’d prefer to be a single crow. I’d be a rhino, without my crash.
When it comes to manatees, I’m not bothered about an assignment. Instead, this hefty sea cow is quite happy to let my pasty and rotund body drift through the Florida waterways solo. Not everyone feels the same.
We’re on the eve of the campaign that is Loneliness Awareness Week. It runs from June 13-17, and this solitary sensation seems to be endemic, even post-lockdown, when we’re a few months into being released into the wild and are allowed to meet and paw each other again.
I suppose things aren’t quite back to normal. Most of us are still more isolated than before the pandemic, now that many are working and shopping online.
Social media only seems to make things worse, by showing all the glossy pally fun stuff and throwing our own lives into stark relief.
The feeling of isolation is an ongoing theme. For last month’s Mental Health Awareness Week, they also took loneliness as a theme, saying “one in four adults feel lonely some or all of the time, and one in five will hide their loneliness in front of others”.
Some say that this feeling can eventually translate into physical illness.
There was a much cited study by US healthcare and insurance company, Cigna, back in 2018. It suggested that loneliness might be more dangerous than obesity and is the equivalent of smoking 15 fags a day. They don’t say whether that’s Lambert & Butler or Marlboro Lights, but it’s definitely worse than vaping.
There’s no denying that we are social animals, and undoubtedly get a flood of endorphins after positive interaction with other people.
We may attempt to evolve, but we will never flush our brains of that stubborn chimpanzee nugget of grey matter.
Whenever I see any of my friends or family, I imagine it has the same effect as if we were all grooming each other and I’m getting a subconscious simian positivity boost.
If we peeled and fed each other bananas, or drank PG Tips and tried to get a piano down the stairs, there would probably be an even greater benefit. We haven’t tried that though. Yet. It’s planned.
However, I have to make sure not to spend TOO much time with any of these people, even my most precious ones.
I need free days to decompress.
In fact, for introverts, like me, loneliness can seem like a bit of an abstract concept. Solitude is what we truly crave.
They say that extroverts are buoyed and invigorated by hanging around with others, while introverts need to collapse in a darkened room, post interaction.
Indeed, at any busy event, I start out adrenalised like the Duracell Bunny. I’ll usually conclude the evening like a rusty Victorian wind-up monkey, twitching and slowly clashing my tiny cymbals while my internal clockwork grinds to a halt and the moths chew through the remainder of my stuffing.
People, and all their expectations, imagined or otherwise, are pretty draining.
When nobody else is around, I do get bored, but, otherwise, I much prefer my own company.
There’s no pressure to have to think about what to say next, I don’t get inveigled into someone else’s step count schedule or am told to ‘take another drink’ in the pub when I just want to get home, get into bed and gaze slack-jawed at middle-aged TikTok.
As I always have, I take me, myself and I to the shops, to exercise classes, for coffee and on day trips.
My favourite of all solo expeditions is to the cinema, especially in the early afternoon, since it seems especially decadent and nobody else likes going at that time of day.
There never has to be any discussion or compromise about what to see, so I will never be forced to endure tiny Tom Cruise’s shenanigans in Top Gun: Maverick.
I don’t have to share my Revels, or do a celluloid post-mortem, when we try to unpick every layer of the confusing concurrent timelines. (Go see Everything Everywhere All At Once or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, if you like that kind of thing). I just let the parallel universes wash over me, one by one.
For me, the final frontier may be eating out alone. Although food tastes sweeter on your own, I still like having my husband there.
However, that’s more of a cultural problem, for those, like me, who don’t like to feel conspicuous.
Nobody wants to appear like Betty Nae Mates, when they’re actually Betty Has Nae Mates But Doesn’t Care.
Not to put a downer on the whole loneliness thing but, for many, it seems to all boils down to the ultimate fear, which seems to be dying alone. That phobia is something I’ll never comprehend. I can’t think of many things that I’d rather do solo. I don’t want anyone talking to me, whispering to ask where the fuse box is, or them coming to a horrifying comprehension about what I look like with no makeup on, as I make my final journey into oblivion.
I’d rather be like our local cat, who headed off down the road and found a cosy and quiet spot in a shed that had been left ajar. They found him a few months later. RIP Ginger Boots. When my time comes, don’t tell the neighbours.