IMAGE SOURCE~©MELANIE NEER~A Graphics design I did and have used on products I made over at the Zazzle website.
I came across a great article by my fellow bubbler, &Denmarkguy where he discusses about the concepts of the Highly Sensitive Person and Loneliness. I thought I would write up my own experiences of "loneliness" and "aloneness".
My parents got divorced when I was only 18 months old, therefore I was an only child and my mother never remarried. I'm guessing that in many ways one of the reasons she adopted our first cat "Babette" when I was five years old, so that I would in a sense have company, since I lacked siblings. By the time I was about seven or eight, I was a latch-key kid. By that age both my grandmother and mother had to work, so yes, I would be alone until they came home from work. Funny how things have changed when you think of it, since if I were a kid in today's society and a latch-key kid at such an early age, my mother probably would have been charged with child negligence or something.
There were actually pluses though when I think of it. Yes, it was a kind of "lonely" childhood for me, however, I developed skills in being responsible at an early age that would remain for my life, and thus developed "coping" skills whenever some problem came up. Also, since I was alone so much, it sparked my creativity and at a much earlier age than most kids, and was considered one of those "gifted" children. With all this "bubbling" creativity I never felt lonely though as I always would have some creative project to do to fill my time with. Now that my mother has passed away nearly seven years ago (my grandmother passed away in 1986), I truly am alone save for my two cats for "company". But so I feel lonely? Nope. I still have tons of creative things and projects to do to fill my time with, so time actually seems to whiz by each day.
To date I still consider myself a "loner" and am actually very comfortable with being alone. I mention this, since I know a person down the block who also lives alone. One thing I would notice though when I would visit her, I got the sense that she really didn't like living alone and perhaps needed to fill the void somehow. Upon entering her apartment, one enters her kitchen area and she would have a small little TV blasting away…go into her living room and that TV would be turned onto full volume…go into her bedroom and the radio would be on. My sense of it she had TVs and radio on all at the same time to give her a sense of "connection" to the outside world, to hear human voices.
I'm almost the opposite and no haven't taken a vow of silence and live in a cloister, yet I'm very comfortable with quiet, though I might have some music going on but at a very low volume while I'm puttering around in front of my computer. When I do my cleaning chores yes, I blast out music at high volume, but otherwise I enjoy quiet.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm also a people person however. When I'm out and about on my errands, I'm one of those people that will strike a conversation with someone while I'm waiting on a long line at the Post Office, then I'll also chat with the postal worker as she or he is taking care of my postal needs. When I do my grocery shopping and am having my items checked out, I'll yak and chat with the cashier. And having always been an "observer" of sorts, one of the things I observe is how glad in a sense the postal worker or cashier are to have someone to talk to. Have you ever noticed that most people when they are being taken care of by that postal worker or casher, don't interact at all with the person, not even to say hello to the person? They just expect their business to be taken care of and out they go.
Do I feel lonely? No, not in the least. Do I appreciate my aloneness? Yes, and perhaps due to having learned just how to deal with aloneness from an early age. Ironically, I can often feel MORE lonely in a crowd than by being alone.
How about you? Do you feel lonely? Alone?
UPDATE: As of this reposting it's now nearly eleven years since my mother passed on as she passed on August 27, 2006. Also sadly my other cat Kissy who was fifteen years old passed on September 1, 2015. I picked that graphics image that I had done, since, yes, I do often talk a lot to my current cat Ouija, and I swear, sometimes talking to one's pet is more worthwhile than talking to most "humans" LOL
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