Author: RShepherd

I feel lonely. A lot.

My loneliness is not for lack of dozens of amazing people in my life, nonstop opportunities to hang out, or relentless avenues of support. My loneliness is not a reflection of an inner void where spirituality belongs, nor is it a need to learn self-love, master relationship to self, or find higher purpose.

There were times before I became free of the clutches of addiction that I would write about being “lonely in a crowd”. That kind of loneliness was about the feeling that maybe we all know on some level of “the void”. The inner void that I have learned can only be filled – for me – by connection to something greater than myself that I call ‘Great Spirit’, which, in my estimation, is synonymous with intuition. That “void” of loneliness existed before I learned how to love and accept myself as I am. Before I came to know that I – and my life – are whole and complete as they are. None of this learning came easily and I have spent hundreds of hours pursuing therapeutics of all sorts, including group and one-on-one counseling. I have beat the drum of self-exploration and self-acceptance so much, that the skin is thin and spent, longing with its deep, exasperated sound to create concert with other instruments in a band of human connection – to be the pulse for other sounds in a song of reciprocity and accompaniment. What good is the sound of a drum that isn’t witnessed? This question is similar to the old adage about a tree in the forest that falls without anyone around… is it even heard?

Despite the incalculable hours I’ve spent learning to love and accept myself and my life, it’s no secret nor a point of victimhood to mention that my life hasn’t turned out the way I imagined or desired that it would. I utterly love and appreciate my life. I am blessed beyond measure and am truly happy. Loving my life and acknowledging that it doesn’t look the way I imagined can co-exist. Gratitude and longing can co-exist. Both matter. Longing for more does not negate thankfulness for and satisfaction with that which is.

When I was a little girl, the one thing that – more than anything else – felt like wind beneath my wings was the idea that one day, I’d find a partner to live and love with – to begin and end my days with, sharing the minutia of day-to-day living , comparing and dividing grocery and task lists, cooking and caring for children together. Someone to laugh with, to be periodically annoyed by, but to return to each and every night, knowing that despite our quirks and mistakes, love is an unconditional container, and ours would hold our relationship just as our arms would hold one another: sustainably, gently, and relentlessly, in a spirit of collaboration, collective growth, and acceptance.
In my life’s quest to find such a sacred connection, I’ve written a resume of so-called “failed” relationships longer than most people’s arms. I get that none of them are actually “failures” because I’ve learned so much along the way, feel affectionately close to myself as a result, and have a deep sense of wholeness.

Over the years, as I learned to love and accept myself in the absence of partnership, I discovered endless satisfaction with being in my own company – it’s easy to spend time with someone you love. But the novelty of self-love – that I’m certain, while it has been deeply authentic, has also soothed the space in me where I long for partnership – has surely worn off. Loving and being with myself, unquestionably, is not the same as loving myself and sharing that love with another person. As I continue to know that I’m loved and loveable, whole and complete in and of my Self, I experience a whole new flavor of loneliness. A loneliness that extends from the inner conflict of learned patterns versus knowledge and wisdom. A loneliness that is locked in by the progress of capitalistic, colonial patriarchy that extols the false virtues of individualism, toxic “independence”, and the marks of so-called “success” within a hardened structure of white supremacy. All of this runs contrary to the wisdom of relationship that whispers from the ground beneath my feet – the knowledge of the Indigeneity of this land that beckons me, amplified by my connection to plant spirits, my ever deepening relationship to Mother Earth, and my continued decolonization efforts.

It’s increasingly ironic to me how the wellness industry does its part in upholding colonial ideology, contorting individualism by edifying self-love in a way that over-privileges the aphorism that one must learn to love themselves before loving another. Those of us who earnestly took that maxim to heart have found ourselves in a vacuum of self-love that swirls with the confusion of having done everything “right”, grounded in true affection, respect, and regard for self, while feeling lonelier than ever. In my efforts to not be codependent, I conflated interdependence with independence, misunderstanding the valid science of attachment, which reminds us that the organic warmth of togetherness that we were born into is a survival necessity. The wellness industry has left the word “attachment” as though a pejorative, and so I shoved the idea off to be a “good practitioner” that clients would want to learn from. God forbid I not be accountable for my own happiness, my own sense of satisfaction, my own experiences of love. How ridiculous to suggest that someone be accountable for their own experiences of love without unity. Unity that is as though the crescendo of a joined heart song – one where the sounds of two or more, when blended, create harmony that pleases and elevates all who are touched by it.

There’s something about having to create togetherness as a self-directed initiative every time loneliness arises that is defeatist. My loneliness is a yearning for innate, in-home togetherness as a built-in, culturally sanctioned, daily reality, not a project that proves I’m “self-assured”, “not a victim”, and “the creator of my own reality”. I’m tired. I’m tired of being misdiagnosed as not loving myself enough when the true prognosis is chronic, unmet attachment needs. I’m tired of feeling like I have to be in action all the time if I want to feel connection. I’m tired of the echoes of the wellness industry, cacophonous in my head , encouraging me to “love what is”, reminding me of manifestation mantras like “you can’t get there from there” (I truly do love you Abraham), gaslighting me with spiritual principles – suggesting that if only I would do gratitude “right”, I’d inevitably create what I truly desire, pegging me as the reason for my own loneliness via trite accountability slogans, telling me that “anything’s possible” as though these frazzled scripts are equations that go as follows: internalized spiritual dictum + energy of the Universe = desired outcome. It doesn’t work that way. The Universe isn’t the mystical version of patriarchy, endlessly and simplistically keeping score. If studying social work has taught me anything, it’s that it’s ignorant and childish to hold everyone accountable for their un-manifested desires without considering the whole of each person’s context. In this case, some of the context happens to be the mammoth impact of internalized, colonial ideologies, and seemingly innocuous “wellness” applications that, as I always feared, can be a fluffy as they sound.

I find it stupid beyond belief that while hundreds -thousands – maybe even millions of people out there can relate to my flavor of loneliness, we’re all probably doing the same thing: sitting by ourselves, wishing we could have alone time AND connection without ever having to leave our homes, but not totally knowing how to create that. Wishing we could just go to the store, walk to the mailbox, watch an episode, or share a quick snack together with someone without having to officially make plans.

I’m starting to see partnership as a well-being asset equally as spiritual practice, proper hydration, and community involvement are predictors of health (at least for me). But how does one create this asset as readily as the others? As far as I know, you don’t, especially if you’re chronically in lack of it. I have been on every dating website, used all the APPS, went for speed dating, went on blind dates, have had friends try to set me up, received dating coaching, read all the books, and was in a collective working towards gaining partnership through mutual support and honest self-exploration. I have done sets of 12-steps on this, have explored it in counseling, and have applied every alternative modality under the sun. And trust me, I practice surrender on this front every. Single. Day. My desire has become an ongoing practice of trying to hold a posture of trust in spiritual orchestration and higher purpose in a balancing act of unconsciously trying to tamp down my longing, lest it defeat me, leaving me fixated on the same thing that I’ve always wanted, but have only fleetingly experienced in my adult life, or, God forbid, lest I seem ungrateful around what I DO have.

Today I’m not going to pretend and I’m not tamping it down: I feel lonely. A lot.