The Life Span of Loneliness | NYT Opinion

I feel loneliness in my chest just a heavy weight on your back my career has isolated me I don't have a partner I don't have kids right after I got married people just fell away as a single parent I retired my greatest fear is dying alone it's a doozy loneliness it's a bad [Music] one the feelings of loneliness and isolation that I feel stem from losing my dad to suicide at 12 years old I feel like I've always felt lonely what did I do to like run everybody else away I feel like I just something that makes people scatter I feel like I if I don't try to be successful I'll always regret not having tried my loneliness is is ends up kind of being My Punishment does everybody feel like this there must be something wrong with me surrounded by people but yet you're still feeling like you're not even around anybody I'm at this wedding and you know kind of like on reflex I open up my phone I pull up a dating app and I start swiping and then I look around and there's just like so many people around me laughing and having a good time just being loving with each other yeah it was a moment of like feeling deep loneliness you might try to do everything possible to find a life partner but you might be single forever people cannot imagine that that you'd be so lonely that you would drad Thanksgiving and thinking like gosh I hope somebody invites me as a single parent I feel like it's the most important and biggest thing I will ever do in life and I just keep it to myself because there's no one to share it with I decided deliberately not to have children while all my close friends decided the opposite and as they were focusing more and more of their time on family life I became deprioritized I would have never told you that I would work this many hours as I do and and I wouldn't have a group of friends surrounding me when my spouse comes home and she just kind of goes off into her corner and she's the first person I want to talk to and I'm the last person she wants to talk to I've been a single mom for you know almost 14 years and I just sometimes feel like I want someone to reach out to me and take care of me friends don't want to hear about how lonely I am it's just too much burden to put on you don't want to add to their burden on other people I've been trying to go to lunch with a colleague of mine my campus for eight years and it still hasn't happened I thought I was building a family that was going to be close and connected and doing things together and that hasn't happened I was important right I mattered to people I thought I did and then I retired and the isolation was deafening I was diagnosed with um a very rare bone marrow cancer I have had certain friends and family disappear from my life such a deep disappointment over those who abandon you the experience of crossdressing and keeping it secret marked me with loneliness during my entire life you look at the time and you go it's it's 3:00 and you have so much your day and the phone doesn't ring no one's connecting with you and you wonder how you can make the day go by for retirement they used to tell you it's the golden years well how can it be golden if there's no one in it I start to feel as if this is my punishment for not having children and I think well you see Ellen in a sense I find myself saying you asked for it and she said Bob we've been married for 66 years and we have so much to say to each other do you suppose other people married this long have so much to talk about and the next night she was [Music] gone TR remember to pick up the phone you have no idea how that unexpected phone call can change their day it's the children saying dad I love you and how are you and it's also a good friend saying Bob I don't like the sound of your voice I'm coming over we're GNA talk if I can get myself to pick up the phone and call somebody somebody else will say you know I'm feeling exactly the same way and then poof you're part of the human face again

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 337,521

Keywords: Is there a loneliness epidemic in America?, Are Americans more lonely than people in other countries?, Why is there a loneliness epidemic?, Did the pandemic create a loneliness epidemic?, How should you handle it when you feel lonely?, Does loneliness impact people of different ages?, Retirement, Motherhood, Adolescence, Depression, Suicide, The New York Times Opinion, The New York Times Opinion Video, NYT Opinion Video, Loneliness, Isolation

Id: VVPc46GFq-4

Length: 5min 6sec (306 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023