Tag: Lonely Places

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Lonely Places, by Lewis

I don’t know where to
begin writing about the subject of “lonely places” without first
distinguishing them from “places of solitude”.  There’s a distinct difference.  People often deliberately seek out places of
solitude for purposes of restoration, deliberation, and soul-searching.  They are places of respite and
retrospection.  They are for clearing the
mind of clutter, connecting with feelings–sometimes painful–that cry out for
exploration.  They are like a shower for
the soul.
In contrast, “lonely
places” are more like a pity-party for the poor-in-spirit.  In the real world, there are places where
solitude-seekers can be alone.  They
offer peace and quiet and are a place to get one’s head together and sort
things out.  They are far from being
“lonely places” unless made to be so by the individual occupying them.  In this entire vast and endlessly varied
world, there is not a single space that is inherently “lonely”, for
“loneliness” is not a physical condition but a state of mind.  If I so desired, I could be lonely on a
crowded city bus or at a fair or concert. 
Sometimes, feeling lonely
can feel safer than reaching out to someone. 
Loneliness is a trust issue.  If I
trust that others can respond to pain with love, there is no need to be lonely.  I suspect that people sometimes get stuck in
loneliness because they are afraid of risking rejection should they attempt to
make some kind of human connection.  If
one is so needy that they scare people away for fear of saying or doing the
wrong thing, they might well feel that they have been rejected.  The solution to this dilemma is to break out
of the loneliness sooner rather than later. 
One way to do that is not to pout but to pucker, not to slump or slink
but to sidle up to someone.
When Laurin died in late
2012, I lost my constant companion and lover. 
The pain was almost unbearable.  I
could have withdrawn into self-pity and made myself lonely.  I am not an extrovert; I’m rather shy,
actually.  I do not particularly like
parties or being in large crowds.  But I
do crave human connection.  I like doing
things for other people.  It’s difficult
for me to allow others to do for me.  But
that’s exactly what I did.  I attended a
grief support group here at The Center and a wellness support group at my
church.  I made a concerted effort to
make new friends and freshen older friendships. 
I had plenty of time to be alone, especially at night.  But I found that simply by being open to the
love and caring of others I had no time or predilection for loneliness.
Social media of the
electronic variety has made connecting with others easier than ever.  I would attribute the nearly pervasive
persistence with which both young and old today text, tweet, and instant
message to a desperate need to circumvent loneliness.  I hope its working.  But when it comes to feeling truly part of
the human community, there’s nothing like a warm hug–perhaps even topped with
a big, wet kiss.
© 11 Aug 2014 

About
the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my
native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two
children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married
to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was
passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were
basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very
attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that
time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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Lonely Places, by Gillian

The
recent hundred-year anniversary of the beginning of WW1 started me thinking
about how war, above any other single cause, creates lonely places of the soul.
After all, the very essence of the armed services is to nullify that; to create
a sense of belonging and total commitment to your military comrades. To a
considerable extent, I’m sure it succeeds. But at the same time it still leaves
ample room for lonely places. Did that man hanging on the barbed wire of no
man’s land in agony, screaming for one of his buddies to shoot him, feel less
alone and lonely in his terrible circumstances simply because he had
buddies? I cannot imagine so. Did that 
tail gunner of the Second World War, huddling cold and frightened in his
rear turret, not feel impossible alone?
But,
sadly, it is not just the combatants who inhabit such lonely places. It is
also, very often, the survivors, and certainly the people who love the ones who
died or returned as shattered pieces of their former selves, to occupy their
own lonely places. We only have to hear that someone is a Vietnam Vet to
immediately conjure up a vision, alas all too frequently correct, of someone
with  …. well, let’s just say, a
vulnerable psyche. The estimate of total American Vietnam Vet suicides is
currently about 100,000; approaching double the number of Americans killed
during the twenty-some years of that seemingly endless, fruitless, war. Right
there are 100,000 vacated lonely places. And of course it’s not just the
veterans of that war who inhabit places so lonely that eventually they have to
take the only way out they can find. The U.S. right now suffers an average of
22 Veteran suicides each day, most of the younger ones having returned
from Iraq or Afghanistan with battered bodies accompanied by memories dark
enough to extinguish the light in their eyes, and their souls. 22 more lonely
places available every day, and no shortage of new tenants.
World
War 1, was a terrible war that was supposed to end all wars and instead gave
birth to the next, already half grown. Whole villages became lonely places.
They had lost an entire generation of men in two minutes “going over the
top,”, leaving only women, old men, and children, to struggle on. Children
dying before their parents is not the natural order of things, and creates
empty spaces so tight that they can squeeze the real life from those held in
their grip, leaving only empty shells to carry on. Consider that awful story of
the Sullivans from Waterloo, Iowa; all five sons died in action when their
light cruiser, USS Juneau, was sunk, (incidentally, one week after I was born,)
on November 13th, 1942. How on earth did their parents and only sister cope
with that one?
Several
years ago I spent some weeks in Hungary. A Jewish friend in Denver had given me
the address of her cousin in Budapest, and I arranged a visit. This poor woman
had lost her husband and their only daughter, thirteen at the time, in
Auschwitz, but somehow survived, herself. She showed me the numbers on her arm,
and talked of nothing but her child, proudly, sadly, showing me photos of this
shyly smiling young girl. I had never met a Concentration Camp survivor before,
nor anyone who had lost their family in one. I felt physically sick but bravely
sat with her for two hours, hearing every nightmare of this family’s holocaust
as if it had just happened the week before. That was how she talked of it, and
I’m sure that’s how it felt to her. She had not lived since then, but simply
drifted on through that huge empty place of the lonely soul, going through the
motions.
One
of my own, personal, lonely places, and I suspect most of us have many of them
we can topple into at any unexpected moment, is the one I can get sucked into
when I find myself forced to confront Man’s constant inhumanity to Man. It’s
not only war as such, but any of the endless violence thrust upon us by
nations, religions, and ideologies. On 9/11/2001 I sat, along with most
Americans and half the world, with my eyes gazing at the TV, somehow mentally
and physically unable to detach myself. The one horror which burned itself into
my brain, out of that entire day of horror, was two people who jumped, holding
hands, from the hundred-and-somethingth floor, to certain death below. I wish
the TV channel had not shown it, but it did. I wish I hadn’t seen it, but I
did. It recurs in my protesting memory, and tosses me into my own lonely space,
even as I involuntarily contemplate theirs. Can you be anywhere but in a lonely
space when you decide to opt for the quick clean death ahead rather than the
slow, painful, dirty one fast encroaching from behind? How much comfort did you
get from the warmth, the perhaps firm grip, of that other hand? Did these two
people, a man and a woman, know each other? Were they friends? Workmates? Or
passing strangers? I have no doubt I could find the answers on the Web, but I
don’t want to know. Those two share my lonely place way too much as it is. They
estimate about 200 people jumped that day, but the only other image that stayed
with me, though not to revisit as often as the hand-holding couple, was a woman
alone, holding down her skirt as she fell. I felt an alarming bubble of
hysterical laughter and tears rising in me, but in the end did neither. To
paraphrase Abraham lincoln, perhaps I hurt too much to laugh but was too old to
cry. No, I doubt I will ever be too old to cry; in fact I seem to do it more
easily and with greater frequency. And perhaps that’s good. At least it’s
better than being, as I was that day, lost in my lonely place, too numb to do
either.
In
May of 2014, the 9/11 Museum opened. It occupies a subterranean space below and
within the very foundations of the World Trade Towers. That sounds a bit creepy
to me. Then I read that hanging on one wall is a huge photograph of people
jumping from the burning building, propelled by billowing black smoke. Why?
Talk about creepy. Why is it there? These people have loved ones, we
presume. Do we have no reverence, no respect, for the dead or for those who
remain? I feel my lonely place approaching. It rattles along in the form of an
old railroad car; doubtless it contains doomed Jews et al. My lonely
place has much of Auschwitz within it. I know for sure that I will never visit
that 9/11 museum. I did visit Auschwitz, and it was awful, but still there’s
the buffer of time. I hadn’t, unlike 9/11, watched it live on TV. I breath
deeply and feel my biggest, deepest, lonely place, pass on by. No, I won’t be
visiting that museum. There are times when those lonely places can only be
fought off with a big double dose of denial.
© August 2014
About the Author 

 I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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Lonely Places by Betsy

There are so many lonely places one
could write about, I find it difficult to settle on one of them.  Probably the loneliest for me would be
loneliness of the heart, such as having a secret about oneself–something one
is terrified to disclose–that’s a very lonely place indeed.
Fear makes a person feel very
lonely–fear of violence, abuse, hunger, thirst, etc. I imagine this to be a
very lonely state of being.  Some are
fearful of being physically alone. They want to be surrounded by people–any
people– all the time.  This also must be
an agonizingly lonely person.
I imagine hatred would contribute to a
person’s feeling of loneliness as well. I believe for humans the natural state
of being is to love not to hate. Hatred is a creation of the human mind and is
not “natural.”
These are all states of being.  Right now I am thinking about an actual
place.
Because I have recently returned from
a visit to the state of Alaska I am thinking of a place most of us have never
visited, a place that appears to be very lonely. Most of the area of the state
of Alaska is a vast wilderness uninhabited by humans. The population of the
state is around 732,000.  That’s in the
entire state of 663,268 square miles an area almost one quarter the size of the
continental United States.  More than
half these 700,000 people live in the cities of Anchorage, Fairbanks, and
Juneau.  The other half are scattered in
towns, villages, or solitary homes, many of them reachable only by airplane or
boat.  Alaska is the largest state in
area in the U.S. and ranks 47th in population making it the least densely
populated state with only 1.26 people per square mile.  I imagine that living in the bush in Alaska
would be a very lonely existence for most folks used to living in a world of
people. But there are many people who live in the bush and live off the land by
choice. Perhaps they were born there and their parents lived there, or maybe
they just landed there and loved it and decided to stay. In some remote
villages a piece of fruit such as one orange can cost $5.00.  You would HAVE to live off the land in these
circumstances.
Alaska’s road system covers only a
small area of the state linking the central population centers of Anchorage and
Fairbanks and the Alaska Highway, the route out of the state through Canada.
The state capital of Juneau is not accessible by road only by car ferry.  The northern and western part of Alaska have
no road system connecting the communities with the rest of the state. 
I try to imagine living in the bush
hundreds of miles from the nearest town. Most of the people living in the bush
live in tiny villages or a group of some sort. 
But I know there are some who live by themselves, alone, in such a
place–and by choice.  This would seem
like a very lonely place to many of us, but clearly not to those who live such
an existence.
I imagine them to be so well
integrated into their environment that they never have a sense of
aloneness.  They actually are not
alone–being so completely ONE with your environment I imagine would not feel
lonely.
Loneliness is most definitely a state
of mind and relative to one’s situation. 
In a way it could be very lonely to think of ourselves, us Earthlings,
as alone in the universe, not knowing who may or may not be out there, where they
are, who they are, how close they are, are they there at all.  On the other hand when I think of myself as
PART of the universe, it doesn’t seem lonely at all.  I guess that’s how it is for the lone
Alaskan, family, or even a community of Alaskan’s living in the bush.  They know they are a PART of the natural
conditions in which they live since their very lives depend so totally on those
conditions.
I do not believe that the lonely
states of being mentioned above–fear, hatred, secretive living, I do not
consider living in such a state to be living in tune with one’s natural
environment, immediate surroundings or the Universe for that matter. So perhaps
we humans create our own lonely places. 
Perhaps there really are no lonely places except as creations of our
minds.
I’ll have to give this more
thought.  But for starters I like
thinking about being in tune with my surroundings, my environment, whatever it
may be–being in tune or being at ONE–I like to think of this as the way we
are meant to live. I like to think of being in tune as a source of contentment
and peace–the antithesis of feeling as if we live in a lonely place.
©
11 August 2014 
About the Author 

 Betsy has been active in the
GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change).  She has been
retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities
include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor
with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of
marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys
spending time with her four grandchildren. 
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing
her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Lonely Places by Phillip Hoyle

The young man who came into my office that afternoon seemed restless as well as earnest. He had stopped by the church, asking to talk with a priest I suppose. I don’t recall the specifics—perhaps the two ordained ministers were out making calls or attending meetings—but like most odd cases not involving members, he ended up in my office. I shook his hand and invited him to be seated. He was shorter than average, a lightweight, dressed in slacks and a summer shirt, his light brown hair buzzed short.

I asked him, “How can I help you?”

He replied, “I need to make a confession.”

My mind rushed through spontaneous although unexpressed thoughts, “Oh they do that at the Cathedral just a block away,” “He doesn’t know much about churches,” “I need to hear this from his point of view,” “I hope he doesn’t think I’m a priest.” I said, “What happened?”

As he hesitated, I realized that whatever the problem was, he thought of it as a sin.

He spoke the unmentionable quickly, “I was with a man last night. We had sex. I didn’t like it.”

I heard his choked out words. He was nearly shaking, ready to cry. I wondered just how old he was, not because I was thinking of the legality of the act or of who initiated it, or why it had taken place. I didn’t assume he was asking for council. He had used the word confession. I felt sorry that whatever happened made him feel so badly. Also I didn’t know if he was playing me for financial support, but I did know he was upset.

I engaged him in further conversation, the content of which I do not recall. Perhaps we prayed together. I’m sure I gave no sacramental words of absolution (we just didn’t do that in our church), but I may have prayed with him in such a way that he could open himself to a sense of forgiveness and self-acceptance through an idea of God’s infinite love. The office was getting ready to close. I asked him if he had transportation home. I offered a ride.

We engaged in more talk during the ride to the south end of the city. Although I have no memory of the conversation, I do recall my feelings and thoughts. I didn’t find myself attracted to him. I wondered at his family life. I realized he might not be asking me for anything but simply needed to tell another human being about the upsetting event. I didn’t know what he thought.

Really I was not much older than he: I twenty-four or five, he nineteen or twenty I supposed. I thought of him as being younger. I was a college graduate; I didn’t know if he had finished high school but thought he may have dropped out.

We must have talked about his need for a job, something I’m sure he brought up. I told him if he needed a ride to a job interview to give me a call. He did so a day or two later. That’s when I met his mom and was in their house. He was not waiting for me so I went to the door and knocked. He came to the door shirtless and invited me inside. He was in the front room ironing a shirt in preparation for the interview while talking to his mom who was in the kitchen. I put myself in neutral, so to speak, listening and watching. While he wasn’t handsome, he did have an attractive body and fine enough verbal skills. I could see he lived in a family with few resources. The new thing for me was their conversation about relatives and friends who were in and out of jail. I was surprised. This was no movie script, and there seemed to be no consciousness of their topic being strange. I concluded that this distraught young man faced more problems than simply his sexual crisis I heard about in my office. In fact, in the weeks I knew him, he too, was in and out of jail. I know because he called me to give him a ride home when he got out. We talked about the experience for him. I don’t recall why he was in jail, perhaps just following in his familial footsteps. He didn’t seem too upset by it except for the boredom of life in jail with nothing to do all day except play cards with other prisoners incarcerated there. I had listened, accepted, talked, and in our brief time offered him transportation. I never heard from him again.

I wondered how conflicted he might be over his homosexuality, but for me his needs seemed more basic: to get and keep a job, build a life, and have a goal. With all my middleclass assumptions, I was unable to touch him in his lonely place or even approach the events that pushed him to show up for confession at the wrong kind of church.

Of course, now I know his lonely place met mine. My work at an upper-middle class church of professionals often left me feeling alone. I fit in but only because of my sense of ministry, my work in music and education. I told another minister of my contacts with the young man without the detail of what he was initially upset about. I told him about how strange I found the conversation between him and his mom when talking about uncle so and so who had just got out of jail or just went back in. I had never been exposed directly to such a world and saw how disadvantaged a youngster in a family with that as daily conversation could be. The minister responded, “O, I bet he was probably as surprised by your world as you were by his.”

That seemed a good perspective. At least I thought it helpful especially as no lines were inappropriately crossed by me or the young man. Yet his voice that appealed across experiential boundaries spoke powerfully to me. I was learning much more about myself. With more knowledge I then saw in our church indications of young people who were conflicted homosexuals and felt a kind of heart for them during those years. I knew adults, too, about whom I wondered, especially when they would tell gay-deriding jokes that I learned gently to counter. But in so doing I realized I was walking a dangerous, lonely edge. I hoped they’d see my appeal as pastoral rather than self-revealing. That fear left me in the most lonely place of my life.

Denver, © 2014

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Lonely Places by Ricky

Deserted Islands

Sinai Desert

Gobi Desert

Death Valley

Rural Nevada

I-90 between Minnesota and Montana

Wyoming

West Texas

Occupied Life Rafts in the Pacific

Australian Outback

Antarctica

SW Arizona

Trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building

Buried Alive

The mind of an Alzheimer patient

Hospitals while an in-patient

Walking on the moon

Graveyards

Empty Theaters

Ancient Ruins

Your home after the death of a spouse or partner

Memories

Broken Hearts

Jail and prison cells

Working in unrewarding or unfulfilling jobs

And last but not least: Sitting in front of a PC at 2AM writing a list of lonely places.

© 11 August 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Lonely Places by Ray S

The irony of this subject’s title when I first thought of it is, if you replaced the letter “n” with “v”, would the subsequent story be more readily at hand or mind?

Have you ever been in a lonely place in a crowd? Aloneness can be desirable when you need peace and quiet. Then there are those contemplative times and places like the September day when you go halfway up the pass to the glorious splendor of a grove of golden aspens bordering the rushing creek where once upon a time they scattered your loved ones’ ashes.

This lonely place belongs to everyone at one time or another and then maybe it is not so lonely. It is God’s place, if you might be a deist, or perhaps the realm of Mother Nature, whenever you’re there alone with your memories and thoughts, and of course, those of the “creator” of your choice.

Here’s the point, you are never alone or lonely when you’re able to get your head and heart in the right place, He/She is always there, just open your eyes and heart.

There is another lonely place too. Think of a great big box or room so big it has no visible boundaries, not even a little closet to crawl into. It is so lonely in there, except you’re in this space with all of the smallest personal to largest imagined or real horrors of how we have totally messed up our life with miserable choices or world shattering war and corruption.

Strange bedfellows for a lonely place, and facing these apparitions simply reinforces how lonely and maybe helpless it all is. If this has all the hallmarks of depression, you’re well on your way to finding space in this vast lonely place. Is there any way out?

Should you sometime find yourself pondering all of this, then that will make two of us in this lonely place and then we won’t have to be lonely.

© 11 Aug 2014






About the Author