Are(n't) you feeling Alone?
Earlier today, while drinking a coffee and eating bread with tomato and cheese at my local restaurant Terra Bela, the woman who works there and is more or less my age asked me the following question:
Aren't You ( feeling ) Alone?**
She explained to met that, since her husband had left her ( a week and a half ago ) and since her mom had broken her arm ( a couple of days back ), she is feeling pretty lonely and that, in turn, made her think of me and my situation.
( FYI: I'm probably the restaurant's most loyal client / frequent visitor, when I'm in town )
I get her.
This bachelor foreigner, living like a hermit writer, alone in his house in this godforsaken ( pardon my French ) hamlet in the Portuguese mountains, without even a car or driver's license...
he must be
lonely.
Her question resulted in me explaining ( not for the first time ) why I need to / choose to be alone most of the time. It also made me realize that I'm feeling pretty good ( alone or not ) these days.
Being alone isn't the same as being lonely. I do not often feel lonely.
This hasn't always been the case though.
I've felt lonely a lot in the past.
Even more when I saw how many people around me ended up in ( more or less ) loving relationships. I witnessed how most of my friends and all of my cousins, even my own siblings settled, got married and became parents and then parents again. It was as if almost everybody around me changed while I kept struggling in a neverending fight with myself.
I have been single most of my life and believe me when I say that this hasn't always been a choice.
I have wished for a loving relationship for so many years, without luck so far.
In fact, now I think of it, I could probably write a book about loneliness as well as on alone-ness. This guy graduated Cum Laude in both subjects.
To give you an idea:
I lived alone on the smallest of the Canary Islands ( not more than 5 by 5 km in size and with almost more ( inactive ) volcanoes than people ). I was working on a film project back then but the project never finished and it was more of a struggle than that it was fun, I often felt very alone. Almost a decade earlier, I went to / escaped to Spain twice ( in 2007 and 2009 ), by myself. First to learn Spanish and the second time to try to find a place to live. It didn't work out.
I've always felt like I didn't fit in, in any kind of group, school, job or team and I've been in many.
I'm sure many of you ( fellow bloggers ) can relate to this.
Now I think of it, I probably feel like I "fit in here", with all the misfits , nerds, weirdos, introverts, misunderstood creatives and so on.
I have been looking for a place like this for most of my life and only discovered it three years ago, aged 35.
It was in 2017, 10 years after graduating from University and after having struggled during most of these years, that I found a place where I felt like I belonged. About a year later, I bought my ( second ) home, here in the mountains in Portugal.
Yeah, I have struggled and suffered loads. I have felt burnt out and depressed for a long, long time.
But, even though I still have difficult days and happiness doesn't come naturally to me, even though every single day feels like another attempt or chance to try and enjoy life, to be more easy-going, to go with the flow, to be more positive and so on, I can't help but feel that I'm doing pretty good lately.
It seems like I'm turning into โจSuperZENsitivosaurusโจ, slowly but steadily.
And to maintain this state of mind, I need a lot of alone time. Alone time balanced out with social time but probably even more alone time than time spent in the company of others.
Lately, I'm realizing that, when I compare myself with a lot of other people ( both on- and offline ) around me, people that I care about, I'm doing really good.
In fact, I decided to write this essay today, in an attempt to help out a couple of people on here, who are clearly struggling lately. People who have become my friends in the last couple of years, even though we never met in real life ( and hopefully some other people that I haven't connected with yet ).
๐๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ช๐ด ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ, ๐ฎ๐บ ๐ง๐ณ๐ช๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ด.
๐ ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ฆ ๐ช๐ต ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฑ๐ด ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ข๐ฏ๐บ ๐ธ๐ข๐บ, ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ช๐ง ๐ช๐ต'๐ด ๐ซ๐ถ๐ด๐ต ๐ข ๐ต๐ช๐ฏ๐บ ๐ฃ๐ช๐ต.
๐๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ'๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ข๐ญ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ.
๐๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐'๐ท๐ฆ ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฐ๐ฐ, ๐ข ๐ฃ๐ช๐จ ๐ฑ๐ข๐ณ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ฎ๐บ ๐ญ๐ช๐ง๐ฆ.
๐๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐'๐ฎ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ฏ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ.
๐ ๐ด๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ฆ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ง๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด ๐ข๐ญ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ฏ.
It's fair to say that feeling alone is one of the underlying themes in my current writing:
The Story of Hypersensitivosaurus
Not so strange if you realize that its main character ( and hopefully your favorite dino ) is very much based on me.
Luckily, I'm slowly starting to master alone-ness and it seems like it is in fact leading to increased productivity, focus and even health / happiness.
( I wonder if I need to thank @drrune and his rune reading for that. I'm sure it has played a part in the process )
Nevertheless, it's all about balance.
I need to make sure that I don't isolate myself too much. It helps to have my twin sister and family at 20 km distance ( a family of extraverts who always have people over on their 2.5 acres of land ), it helps that I go on daily walks and tend to talk easily with people whenever they cross my path, it sure helps to speak many languages.
I'm a talkative introvert.
Enough about me. Let's put the spotlights on the writer character in The Life of Hypersensitivosaurus and on Hypersensitivosaurus himself, focusing on a couple of scenes on alone- and / or loneliness that I managed to find in last November's writing:
For Your Information: Regina is the name / brand of his ( and my ) typewriter.
And here's a more fun scene, where I wrote about ( not ) being alone
( it's part of the actual Hypersensitivosaurus story, the story in the book )
To be more precise, it's a fragment of an ( alternative and more ) happy ending and describes a meeting between Hypersensitivosaurus and his dad. The latter visits his now grown-up son who he hasn't been in contact with for many years
( sorry for the Font. This is the one that I apparently used here, last November and I don't like to make things prettier than they are/ were ).
And last but not least, I'll leave you with a continuation of the scene that I ended in a cliffhanger ( at least @ryivhnn notice this and asked for more ) a couple of days ago in The Life of Hypersensitivosaurus - You are Not a Raptor
If you haven't read that post from 3 days ago, go there first.
If you have, here's Part 2:
He remained silent and drank some more and she took this as a sign to continue her story:
โYou have always been different, standing out from your parents and even from your siblings, let alone from other raptors and you know what? That's exactly the reason why I've always liked you.โ
She smiled at him and this time he knew that this emotion was genuine. She kept looking at him as if she expected a response and he replied:
โI've always liked you too...โ
( and this was millions of years before U2 started making music, so let there be no misunderstanding here )
โSo.... he continued hesitantly, โฆ what did you mean with you are not a raptor? Do you know that you made me feel like I'm adopted, as if I haven't been raised by my own parents. And, if I'm totally honest with you, I have sensed this for a long, long time...โ
She looked at him with an unclear expression on her face ( possibly pity ) and scraped her voice:
...I honestly don't know about that. I was born a year later than you and nobody ever told me, but I have to say one thing:
Not only have you always acted in a unique way, you also don't resemble any other raptor that I know of. And we didn't even mention your diet...
she laughed out loud and he couldn't tell if she was just playing with him or being serious here. Whatever was the case, he felt empty inside and sensed it was more than just hunger.
She seemed to pick up on his emotion, as she quickly continued sprouting her thoughts:
โNo need to feel bad about this. You're different in the best way possible. Also, I can tell by how your family treated you, that they've always accepted you as one of their own. They loved to have you around.โ
This last remark just made him want to hug her. If it wasn't for his short, clumsy arms and her broad back, he would have done exactly that. So, instead, he gave her the least scary, teeth baring smile that he could produce. It must have looked strange to her, but she knew him well enough to understand that this was meant as a sign of gratefulness.
โThank youโ, he said. โAll this means a lot to me, even more coming from you. For a moment, I thought I was an entirely different species, but I guess that we're all dinosaurs in the end, so it doesn't really matter."