Loneliness

I think a lot about loneliness, and what it means to be lonely. I’m lonely now. I have to be if I’m to write effectively. I am chasing an absence of the heart, but to do so I have to be ready to go to a place that might well be uncomfortable. But I know it will hold the truth. That’s why I have to be prepared to try and go there. The moment holds my consciousness in its silence. Here I can tap into the quietness of my mind, doing cartwheels in its anticipation of what’s to come when the words start to flow. It is here I sit and wait for inspiration. Desk cleared of clutter. Incense burning. Here I wait for no one because I know no one is coming, anytime soon. I sit with it and wait again. I think back to the times when I’ve been most lonely. Often it’s been when I have been surrounded by thousands of people.

I was lonely standing on Hill 16 at the end of the 2015 All-Ireland Final, the tears streaming down my face matching the driving rain. Minutes earlier the final whistle had signaled Dublin’s slaying of the Kerry mammoth for a third time in five years. Dublin’s legendary manager of the 1970s and 80s Kevin Heffernan once said that winning an All-Ireland against The Kingdom counted for two. The boot is on the other foot now and the chances are they’ll be saying the same thing down in Killarney and Tralee the next time they beat Dublin in a final. Dublin went home with Sam Maguire and I went home with a cold, which I brought back on the plane to Riyadh, where I was working at the time, a few days later. It was the best reason for getting a cold I ever had.

So what was it that made me feel so lonely that day? I feel lonely when people leave, I feel lonely when I leave and yet I also like spending time alone. Loneliness is somewhere I like to go, but I know that I have to come back to people. I’ve always hated goodbyes. Hill 16 is one of those places where I feel connected to a sense of place, surrounded by people who share my passion. I felt lonely that particular day because I knew I was leaving Samuel in a couple of days’ time and heading back to Riyadh. The most difficult thing I’ve ever done or will have to do in my life. I felt lonely because often it is the happy moments that remind me of what’s really possible when it all comes together, how perfect, despite everything, life can be. I was lonely because I knew it wouldn’t last, this feeling that would dissipate when the external reality of life outside hit when I left the ground. Being at a match supporting a team I am invested in might as well be an alternative universe. It’s one of the many reasons I go there, to disconnect from worry, to forget, to feel alive, to feel anything is possible, and to hide. It’s the same reason people go to see their favorite band, or whatever it is that takes them to another place and allows them to shift their consciousness and focus, even for a short period. It’s here that people recharge so that they can go again, until the next time.   

Loneliness is a state of mind, a feeling, a place, or a person who isn’t there anymore or never was or will be again. I used to be lonely in the place where it worked. It was full of some wonderful colleagues and friends, but it wasn’t me. My spirit was restless and unsettled. I used to park my car pointing toward home when I arrived in the morning, always a bad sign. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough at the end of the day. Some people still don’t get it because the sense of loneliness was accompanied by a permanent pensionable job, long holidays, and a cup of tea and crusty buns at 11 a.m. every morning. It was so good we even worked on Saturdays. I knew I was in trouble when the PR department came up with a description of the school as a way of life. It was only ever a job to me. There was a loneliness to be found in driving to work on a Saturday morning when most of Ireland was still sleeping easily under the collective softness of a homecoming duvet. Some of them probably hadn’t even made it home yet. The roads were empty and so were the bus stops, inhabited only by shop assistants and the other poor souls going to work or heading into Dublin for part-time college courses. I used to ask myself why we were made to do it, but I never came up with an answer to why children should have been forced to go to school six days a week. Perhaps it was a feeling that the real world outside the gates was a frightening place, somewhere not to be trusted, especially at the weekend when temptation stalked the land. Maybe it was just tradition. Whatever it was, it did my head in. It troubled me that I should have been content, but something kept nibbling away at my gut until the dam burst and I left. The irony is that they got rid of Saturday school a few years later, perhaps they were waiting for me to leave. So, yes, I suppose they had the last laugh.    

When I started writing for the first time I didn’t factor in the loneliness that comes with it. The hours spent alone. I loved it and yet it overwhelmed me. I came to understand how much I missed the buzz of the staffroom more than it missed me. I missed people. I missed the security. Suddenly I was cut off from the person I had been for nineteen long years and now here I was struggling to come to terms with the caterpillar desperate to become a butterfly. At one stage I even tried to go back, but they wouldn’t have me. That was my biggest mistake. I had jumped off the cliff with my wings flapping wildly to no effect. I had insulted them by leaving and doing other things outside. Understandably they didn’t want me anymore. I learned my lesson and when I walked out of there after possibly the most dispiriting interview I ever did, I knew I would not be going back ever, although I had to make an exception for my brother’s retirement evening.

It was over. Finally, I was ready to move on.

Loneliness is the reason I write now. It’s where I go to feel safe. It’s where I can be myself. No need to apologize. No hesitation. I can write what I like. I get to go to places I’ve never been and I get to spend the day with people I’ve never seen. I write about the wonderful and not-so-wonderful people I’ve met along the road of life and turn them into characters in my stories. Sometimes that loneliness can be the best feeling in the world, sometimes the worst. Some days it feels like summer, some it feels like rain. Days spent alone trying to work out what’s important, what has to be done, and what doesn’t. Too many in a row can be a problem, especially if you’re one of those people like me who thinks too much, so I mix it up. Throw something different into the pot. Spend time around good people. Learn to breathe. Sing out loud and whatever you do laugh even if there’s nothing to laugh about.

Loneliness is a place. Someone who’s not around anymore, an absence of the heart borne out of the mistakes we make along the way. A feeling. There are times when the emptiness is the only thing left to fill the void. We use it to seek out what we do not have at that moment. The light slowly gets stronger until it shines brightly once again. You can see it in the eyes of an old man sitting on a bench in the park, his thoughts drifting back in time. Loneliness has a habit of helping us to find a way back home. I’ve learned to sit with it, this enemy that can become a vibrant friend. It lives in the pit of the stomach, in my neck and shoulders, in my head, and most of all in my heart. It’s a separation of self, a reminder of the importance of connection. It’s the internal dancing seamlessly with the external except it never seems to work that way. This search for something lost when we were young, or maybe a more recent grief. The pure energy of curiosity we entered the world with was replaced by a fear of what we might find if we dug too deep. In school we are told what to do and what to think, the outside pressures and expectations choking the natural spirit within. Going to school felt like I had been put in the boot of a car and driven down a road for fourteen years and dropped off in the middle of nowhere and told to find my own way home. 

Tha’s why I write.