Being alone and being lonely are completely different notions. Being alone is the act of being secluded or apart from other human beings…Being lonely is the emotional detatchment you get from having no emotional connections. You can be in a stadium full of people and still be lonely. That is what I am, lonely. I revel in being alone. I love it. I can walk around my apartment naked if I really wanted to and there would be no one to complain but myself. And up until recently, I never minded be lonely, either. But now, I’m losing sight of any real reason to continue. I can walk around my campus and see all of the groups of people hanging out, playing sports, making memories..I walk to work. I walk to the store. I go home. No one bothers to speak to me. No one bothers to guess my story. We all just move on with our lives never really engaging.
I don’t want to participate in a non-participatory world.
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Alone + Lonely = Alonely?
That’ll work. Say it like Kim Jong-il for maximum effect.
Hell, I used to walk around my single-room barrack nekkid all the time. It’s quite freeing and I felt so…empowered. Au naturale and all that jazz. Except that one morning where there was an inspection and the Sar’ Major bashed in my door and…you get the idea.
What would happen if you put all us alonely people into one room? Would we sit silently like a pack of owls? Or would we mingle like the majestic alpaca and move past our own self-imposed social barriers? I think I’d quite like the company of another alonely person. Yes, it’d be pretty neat I’d say.
Clothing optional of course.
(…just kidding).
Good to hear from you, again, Shep. Though the naked bit was just a metaphor, I’m glad it worked as a jumping off point for you. 😛 I’m sure your superior was quite surprised.
I”d liked to think that a room full of “alonely” people would engage and speak to one another but a part of me thinks that we’d all sit there in silence; afraid to put in any effort.
Maybe I should call myself solitaryplatypus.
… 🙁 metaphors do tend to escape me quite a lot. Erm…
Um, anyway. I guess it’d just take that *one* motivated alonely individual to get the whole crew going. You’d think that after the third or fourth hour of complete silence (minus the occasional cough and snickering over how dorky I look) that people would start to get uneasy and would either: 1) Cut their losses and go back to the pub or 2) Attempt to engage in some form of conversation.
One could only hope in such a situation, but that remains to be seen. Oh, and it’s good to hear from you again as well. 🙂
Haha…Shep was naked for his barracks inspection.
Funny stuff.
I’m not sure if NZ military commanders shout “Attention!” in that situation, but I don’t think I could keep a straight face if they did.
Platypus: Do what your heart desires!
Shep: It’s alright. Metaphors are often overlooked and usually misunderstood, anyway. 😛 We can imagine that’s how it’d go. I keep forgetting that you are from NZ and it takes me a second to adjust to the dialect. American’s are a rather unimaginative lot. “Pubs” are “bars”, here. Personally, I like pub, better.
Copelessness: I would not have been able to keep a straight face. I’d have lost it if someone yelled, “Attention!”
I usually like my solitude, but sometimes I feel lonely…
Same here. Solitude is wonderful, but I can’t be that way all the time.
I don’t like crowds though. I can deal with them, but I retreat into myself and don’t engage people outside of basic considerate niceties.
The problem is that solitude has made me more difficult when I occasionally am with somebody. I feel easily irritated (by noise and other stimuli), easily offended and am not entertaining at all, so somehow solitude also condemns me to loneliness. I just can’t break the circle.
I am somewhat the opposite. I’m not offended or irritated. Of course I have absolutely no social skills when I’m around people who are just acquaintances or less so there’s that.
It keeps me inside and secluded from the world. Stuck in a circle as well.
How can you like to be lonely?
I am lonely day and night, week after month after year, and i hate it, it destroyed my life, and i don’t even understand why it happened.
I would give all my life away, to be loved by a woman i could love for a month.
Loneliness is beyond horrible.