LONELINESS It’s a crippling epidemic but one we aren’t talking enough about
IT’S always the forms that unravel me.
Life will be galloping along in a happy blur of family, work, friends and exercise until suddenly I have occasion to fill out my personal details. Most recently it was in hospital for a routine procedure. I say “routine” but it involved being anaesthetised and, as the fine print tells you, there’s always a risk you’ll cark it.
Presumably that’s why the hospital wants to know who will collect your body. And that’s where I always come unstuck. You see, I can fill out the boxes on my health fund, Medicare number and what sort of sandwich I’d prefer when I come around (egg and cress, please). But it’s the “next of kin” where I stumble.
Kin. It refers to those to whom you’re related, akin, allied or close.
I always used to write my husband’s name. But four years ago we separated and now I don’t know who to write. My children are too young. My friends have their own families and my parents live in another country — not ideal if you’re suddenly stiffening on a slab.
In that moment I feel a piercing loneliness. It’s self-pitying, I know, but I’m left wondering to whom I matter, where I belong, where my edges meet another’s.
In the hospital that day they were playing Yellow Submarine as they injected the anaesthesia. It made me think of another Beatles song — the one my best friend recited at her wedding. Though I know I’ll never lose affection For the people and things that went before I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
How many are craving someone to “love them more”? To feel connected? To have another make them a cup of tea? It’s not easy to write about loneliness. Fortunately, I only feel it fleetingly — and a quick ring round unearthed half a dozen mates who’d collect my corpse — but for a growing number it’s a daily reality. To say you’re lonely is to signal your social weakness. It makes others uncomfortable because unlike depression, anxiety, self-harm and obesity it’s an epidemic that’s metastasising in the shadows. It’s not destigmatised by charities or validated by human resources departments. Indeed, the few celebrities who have confessed to feeling lonely, such as Kylie Minogue, appear to regret their candour. “I’m single but not lonely,” Minogue said emphatically last month, three years after declaring loneliness her greatest fear.
The truth is it’s a silent disease suffered everywhere from bedrooms to boardrooms. In a 2016 survey by Lifeline, more than 80 per cent of the respondents said the feeling of loneliness was increasing in Australia. Twothirds of respondents said they “often feel lonely” and 33 per cent said they felt they had no one to confide in. Worse, loneliness can kill you. While air pollution increases your odds of dying early by five per cent, obesity 20 per cent and excessive drinking 30 per cent, loneliness increases your odds of an early death by 45 per cent. Is it any wonder the UK has appointed a Minister for Loneliness?
Growing up in the provinces, I rarely heard of anyone feeling lonely. We knew our neighbours and our door was always open, the coffee percolator bubbled constantly and I baked slices to cater for those who “dropped in”. Even when we’d grown too old for swim club, my mum kept in touch with the other parents. When her friend Judy lost her husband, my mum was by her side. When Judy went into a care facility, my mum visited every week for more than a decade. Mum was overseas when Judy died so she sent my brother to read her emailed eulogy. Oh, to have grown old in the 20th century when our friendships, not what we owned or accumulated, was the measure of our wealth. How did we become so segregated, so Balkanised, so bloody alone?
Last year I was equally charmed and saddened by widower Ray Johnstone who posted an ad for a fishing buddy on Gumtree. ‘I am a land-based fisherman,’ he wrote. ‘What I want is a fishing mate in a similar position to myself who also wants someone to go fishing with,’ read his advert.
Good on him for using technology to find a friend but it’s that very technology that’s setting the young up for unprecedented levels of loneliness. When a smartphone masquerades as your friend, you don’t have to leave the house or go on a date or even join a club. Yet for all its functions, a phone lacks the one thing that truly connects: a heartbeat.
For decades now we have championed individualism, self-belief and the cult of “me”. It’s done us no good. We clearly thrive when we’re both interdependent and dependable. I love the suggestion by the extraordinary Brene Brown to cultivate a “strong back, soft front and wild heart”. It sounds like a blueprint for lifelong connection.
Incidentally, I’ve devised a list of next of kin. They all have cars with large boots or — should my luck prevail — they’ll happily rustle up a cup of tea for me to sip with my egg and cress sandwich.