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The poster I love, the marketing copy is on point and the script I am proud of - it's funny and moving all at once. But I have spent most of the week trying to forget it's happening and just yesterday I turned down an opportunity to speak about the play. Though a piece of art, it feels far too close to my reality right now for me to engage with it or celebrate it in anyway.
SESSIONS tells the story of a young black man who starts therapy as he approaches his 30th birthday. It's billed as exploring masculinity and the complexity of depression and therapy and one of the main themes that pervades the play is loneliness and it's a theme that pervades my life.
If I asked you to think of the last time you felt lonely when would it be and why?
For me it was all of today, yesterday and the day before and it has been lingering for the best part of 6 weeks. I'll save the why for my journal but it is a fairly regular visitor.
The cure to loneliness one might say is to talk, to reach out to someone. But that suggests reaching out is never the cause of loneliness itself. What happens when you attempt to reach out and you're faced with silence because nobody is available? Or you're met with awkwardness when you share how you really feel and you now have to work out how to make the other person feel more comfortable? I feel I'm rather adept at this and can always be on hand with a quip to lighten the mood. And what about when you don't want to talk at all? You fancy doing something a little bit reckless for some emotional respite only for it to dawn on you that you have nobody to do it with?
There is perhaps someone somewhere who thinks that the answer is learning to be ok with being by yourself. And I'd tell that person to respectfully shut up. Firstly, loneliness is not predicated on being physically alone and can be experienced in company. Secondly, we are by nature social creatures. Whilst I agree that we should all be able to find enjoyment in our own company and be comfortable being alone with ourselves for periods at a time, this idea of being completely self-sufficient is a nonsense. We need each other and there is beauty in interdependence, community and connection. The rise of the individual and an independent "I", is the root of so many of society's ills. It's okay to not want to do every part of life solo. I mean have you lived life? It's bloody hard. We're meant to have others in our lives to share our highs and lows with and critically we're meant to feel like we have those people who we can share with.
And maybe that's part of what loneliness is about - not feeling like you have those people. I'm sure many of my friends would be surprised to hear I feel as lonely as often as I do. They might even tell me "why, but I'm here". However, if you don't feel that to be the case then is it really true? Which brings me to defining loneliness. Like all the big feelings it's a slippery term. But I think a good start would be one of the following:
- a feeling of an absence of connection
OR
- a visceral feeling of isolation and separation.
So, what is the cure for loneliness? Call me a pessimist, but in the short term, unfortunately, I don't think there is one. Most suggestions are like putting a very rubbish, Boots plaster lacking adequate adhesive on a gaping wound. Contrary to what I have previously been advised, thinking about the promising career you're building does not in any way provide comfort. At this point I must say, please, pretty please, stop trying to diminish how people are feeling by looking to their achievements. Please. It is so very possible to be excelling professionally and feel very pants personally. I assure you. Similarly, I don't think loneliness is cured by being told how inspiring or amazing you are. Such statements miss the point and often only exacerbate the sense of isolation for the person you seek to comfort.
Now we've established there's no short term fix, you do some silent night-time crying, emotional eating courtesy of Deliveroo (playing your part to stimulate the economy - a selfless act really) and you operate day-to-day on autopilot as best you can. But what about in the long term? That, my friends, remains unclear. Intense feelings of loneliness can (not always) start to mess with your perception of self, which in turn makes you feel less confident about attempting to forge or maintain the sort of relationships you seek, the sort of relationships that might actually alleviate some of what you're feeling. Left to fester, it can create a vicious cycle, and if it grips you long enough you can start to lose faith that there is a solution.
So how do we solve a problem like loneliness? I don't really know. And once I hit send on this I will cringe and die inside that I have written at length on this topic, which has me questioning why I have written this at all. But I wrote this for the same reason I've done so many things in my life, so that one other person might find connection and feel slightly less alone.
It is for that same reason that I wrote SESSIONS the play. And so even though I don't feel positive feelings about it yet, I'm sure at some point before the run opens I will. And my hope is that by the time that date comes, I too feel a little less alone.
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