Types of loneliness

June 13th, 2024

Most of my life was spent alone. I rarely felt lonely though — I think that was an emotion I felt only in my teens and early twenties. After that, I cherished my aloof aloneness — to a degree that I actively alienated a lot of people who cared for me. I was also a very different person then, and I used the perceived rejection of others and lack of interactions to feed and explain and excuse my addiction. But then, in the last four years, that way of living is absolutely fantastic and works wonders for me — and obviously that is linked mostly to my sobriety. That is ironic, since in my teens and early twenties I had a vast circle of friends and acquaintances around me and yet I was lonely. Nowadays, the circle of people I know and care about is very small and rarely does someone new get the admitance. I like that a lot.

But there is a different type of loneliness that I am sure I have experienced for many years, but only in recent times has come to the forefront of my thoughts. I can call it a cosmic loneliness, but it sounds contrived and pathetic. Anyway — that is a feeling and deep emotion that cuts right through my soul everytime I look up at the night sky. Our place — our planet is extremely insignificant and out of the way on any scale that goes beyond just the solar system. We will never discover or see or experience anything more than our immediate neighboring planets. At least not until we are not no longer bound by our bodies, which are fragile and unwieldy and very high-maintenance. What is out there we can see only in a delay of millions and billions of years. We are (possibly blissfully) unaware of anything that goes on beyond our planetary system. And any speculation on any kind of other life out there is meaningless — including in sci-fi. We as a species are lonely here, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change that.