Let me tell you about a typical week

Let me tell you about a typical week.

Much of it is spent with family: the ruckus and laughter of life with teenagers. And much of it is spent with workmates: amongst the hard yakka, stopping for moments here and there to do the newspaper quiz together, or to ask with kindness after each others' kids and pets and weekends.

In my leisure time, there is a string of coffee dates; and as I walk to them, there are hugs and air kisses to friends met on the street. My phone chirps and chimes with messages sent and received, invitations to this or that.

People I like, people I love, are omnipresent; so much so that I will sometimes steal a moment in a quiet place - the ladies' room, when there's nowhere else - just so that I can breathe.

And yet I am lonely.

Worse still: I am ashamed of it.

-----

I'd always thought about loneliness, insofar as I thought about it at all, as a thing that happens to old people who sit alone in Housing NZ flats, the ashes of a spouse on the mantelpiece as they watch daytime TV.

Or I thought about it as a kind of character flaw: the own goal of people too grumpy or awkward to coexist with the rest of their species.

Most of all, I thought of loneliness as a kind of failure.

These ideas were not kind, and they were not true.

It is not older people, in New Zealand or overseas, who are most likely to be lonely. Certainly, loneliness exists amongst older people: but so too do the wisdom and reflection, the knowing yourself, that help safeguard against it.

Loneliness is highest amongst our young people, aged 15-24, a group you could say was never more connected to the world, and never more brushed aside by it.

It happens to immigrants and refugees, to folks who are out of work. It happens to people experiencing change or loss. It happens to people whose lives look outwardly great.

It can happen to all of us. We just don't like to talk about it. And I understand why.

-----

I didn't think loneliness would happen to me. Before I was single, it was mostly hypothetical - the kind of thing that might befall a character in a novel I didn't have time to read.

I imagined the life of a single person as an endless, delicious freedom: doing yoga classes any time I pleased, and eating weird stuff for dinner with impunity, like sardines on toast.

Going to parties and saying charming and witty things to eligible men - or having two wines, and merely believing I am saying charming and witty things. Whatever.

Loneliness in your forties has its own peculiar qualities. Some of your friends are young enough that they're getting married, having babies. Others are in rock solid partnerships for a lifetime, planning out the years they will treasure together, travel aspirations and home extensions.

They hold hands when they walk together.

It's hard in the middle of this stuff to talk about loneliness, without it seeming like a shining badge of loserhood, a jealous gripe, or some kind of self-indulgent plea.

And so I cringe a little at seeing my words, at the embarrassing earnestness and vulnerability of them - like rediscovering the shitty angst-ridden diary you wrote as a teenager.

I didn't think loneliness would happen to me, and I didn't think it would hurt this much.

-----

We need to talk about loneliness. We need to talk about it because it's harming, sometimes killing, us.

Going first stinks, but someone has to. Here goes.

I'm not even sure what is my objective in telling you this, or whether I really have an objective at all. I'm not convinced that I have anything new or insightful to say.

I'll get through this - I haven't lost my faith, in myself or in other people - and if you're feeling the same way, I hope you'll get through it too.

I guess I just want you to know that if you're lonely, then you're not alone.