Episode 1: Snapshots of Loneliness

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Micaela

I'm sort of sitting in my little apartment right now. I'm alone. I'm talking to you.  But this is, this does feel like the opposite of loneliness being in a place where there is an ease to connection.

Marci

Sometimes it felt as if people were speaking a different language around me, or there was just this failure to connect or bond with people. You know, you might be surrounded by people and people you love dearly even and still feel the sense of isolation or separateness from them.

Luis:

Loneliness is when you get used to it as you say when you slowly evolve to the point that it's harder and harder to get out, it becomes a comfort blanket with thorns on the inside. It's that self-flagellation, that pain.

Edna

And I do get down, and sad and miserable and I just say, well, the day is nearly over and maybe tomorrow will be not quite so miserable. It's very very difficult to live alone. Really very difficult. The thing to do is try very hard not to think about it, not to accept it.....Are you there?

Jeremy

We are, Edna. Welcome to, Is Anybody Out There, a podcast about loneliness brought to you by the Connectery. I'm Jeremy Warshaw.

Judy

And I’m Judy D'Mello.

Jeremy

‘Snapshots of Loneliness’ is the first episode in our series about loneliness and social connection. And loneliness is something I can relate to. I'm a Brit living in New York. Been here for 35 years and I miss my home; more specifically, I mean my daughter, my mom and my sister, and all my friends who live in the UK. But I'm stuck here because my wife is American and she's, she's comfortable here. She has a job, family, and many of her friends are within a socially-distanced glass of wine away. And anyway, I happen to like her. So I'm not going to go storming off in a huff. As a freelancer, I'm used to being on my own, although I don't much care for it. And now at least in these times of COVID, the good thing is, well, at least I have my wife's company. I'm also lucky because I can talk a lot to one of my dearest friends in the world --  Judy.

Judy

That's me, a fellow transplanted Brit, who met Jeremy in New York, about 30 years ago in the hallways of an ad agency. It was the sound of a familiar accent that made us stop and introduce ourselves was a shared connection. And we went on to become the best of buddies. Over three decades together. We've been through dating dramas, marriages, arrival of children, holidays together, divorces and cheering for our beloved football -- oops! -- soccer, teams.

Jeremy

Chelsea!

Judy

Arsenal!

Jeremy

A few months ago, Judy and I were talking about feelings that we shared of being somewhat disconnected from community and missing the UK. Judy is a bit more resilient than me, so she wasn't moaning like I was, but we both knew what the other was talking about, in a word, loneliness. And I think it's something very familiar to all immigrants and folks who don't feel connected to where they live. So the idea for a podcast was born. Not that the world needs another podcast, but the world does need to talk about loneliness.

Judy

But let's start by simply listening to real people, tell their stories of experiencing loneliness. We need to hear from them because it's important to understand that loneliness impacts all types of people, old and young, married, and single, social butterflies and introverts.

Jeremy

So thank you, Edna and Luis and Emery and Micaela and Marci for sharing such raw and often painful truths.

Edna

It's difficult. And, uh, I talk out loud when that happens;. Right away, when I begin to feel morose and miserable, you know, Edna, thank God that you've, you're living in a beautiful place. You don't want for anything. The fact that you can't just get yourself ready and go out or drive. I can't do that. I haven't been out for five, six weeks already, but at least I've got my friends. I've got my pussy cats. I've got the sun shining outside. I do have a lot to be grateful for.

Jeremy

I met 91 year old Edna through a volunteering organization. I work with. I came to learn that she lives on the West coast on her own. And a major part of a daily life is spent alone with only her two cats for company. As I got to know her, it was quickly apparent that she's as bright as a button, got all her marbles. And she's curious about absolutely everything.

Edna

I've never had to live alone. I've always had... My parents always had a house for the people. And even after I divorced that beast, I still had a house full of people. My friends were always, 'Are you in? We're coming. They were always there. Now that they're not there because most of them are either they died or, or, you know, they're all got big families themselves but they never forget me.

Judy

As a society, we've come to accept that loneliness is part of getting old. So it might surprise you to learn that more recently, millennials and gen  Z-ers reported being lonely in increasing numbers. A YouGov survey found that one in three said they're always or often feeling lonely. You know, as I was digging around the internet, doing research for this podcast, I came across a pretty remarkable video on YouTube made by a freshman at Cornell University. And it was about loneliness.

Emery

So I'm a brand spanking new freshman in college. And like, I guess I just assumed that once I was at school, I was gonna have a million friends. I was going to just party all the time And it was just going to be lit, but it's just not really like that.

Judy

Emery Bergmann made that video. She's a senior at Cornell today. And here's what she had to say about her experience with loneliness and the toll it took on her self-esteem.

Emery

It was more of like a, a visual diary. And it was me being very candid about the fact that I had felt pretty isolated during my first few months at school, because at that time I'd only been there for about two, two and a half months. I was more surprised at the amount of time I was just spending by myself. You can feel lonely in a group of people. And like, I think in college, I didn't realize that how much time I would just be moving through the world on my own. I think that like when you're in high school, you know, you're very much in this controlled space where you're around people all the time. And in college, I have my own schedule and stuff.

Judy

Did you go into a, sort of a negative spiral downwards through this period?

Emery

Oh, for sure. I blamed myself for everything. Anytime I had a social interaction that I felt was like remotely off, I was like, I'm such a freak. Like I'm such a weirdo. I would had a really negative internal dialogue with the way that I would approach social situations that everything that I was doing was wrong. That I was the weird one in this, in this case. The reason why I wasn't making friends was because there was something wrong with me. In reality, there was no like concrete reason to blame. It was more of just like everybody's getting a foothold in this new environment.

Jeremy

You know, listening to Emery reminds me of my teenage years. I can sort of relate to transitions and trying to fit in. I unfortunately went to a boarding school in England from the age of eight all the way until I was 18. I think there were 600 boys at this all boys school. And there were only three of us who were Jewish. And I felt pretty immediately that I wasn't part of the group. I felt I was sort of picked on because I was Jewish. I was different and detached from everyone else. And I'm sure I protected myself with having a, a sense of putting on my armor every day to make sure my feelings weren't hurt, but in doing so you tend to withdraw. And, uh, it impacted me quite seriously. Um, and for quite a time, until I got to understand that if it wasn't about being a minority, in one regard, it would be about being small or about being not too good at sports or something, there's always something. And it wasn't about me. It was just about the sense of tribe, which you either belong to, or you didn't. I do relate to Emory. And I do understand that transitions are hard and the feeling of loneliness can be pretty deeply baked unless it's tended to.

Judy

It's true. Loneliness can exist so deeply within us that we can't always see it and, or even identify it. And even if we do, it's often just too shameful for us to admit to it. It certainly has been that way for me, whenever I've experienced loneliness. And I have from time to time. You know, when I was 12, I moved with my family. We moved from India to London and I have to admit the Brits didn't exactly roll out a welcome mat for me and my Brown family. But this was a very different time in England, a time of great racial tension and upheaval when Indians and Pakistanis were being targeted specifically. So I was bullied at school. I was called 'curry breath' which sounds ridiculous now, but it was the worst thing in the world then, but even worse than that, actually my brother once was coming home one night and he got jumped by a bunch of skinheads and they beat him up pretty badly. It was awful. And I remember just that feeling that I am so different. And as you said, Jeremy, I just felt unwelcome. Like I didn't belong to this place, to the society, to this community. I was just on the, on the outs. And the result of that was I felt very lonely, but of course, I didn't know that's what it was at the time. All I knew was that I had to work even harder to try and fit in. And I had to get there, even if it meant pretending to be someone else and losing the true me.

Jeremy

That's exactly how Luis described his childhood, which was split between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego.

Luis

My mother was American and my father is Mexican. So we would cross the border to go to school. We would cross the border to go to the post office, different errands like that. If you live in a border town, you can get, you know, passes, right. You establish that you have a bank account in Mexico or have a home in Mexico. So they know you're going to go back at the end of the day. So, you know, you live in a very bi border experience. So during the day I would be in the United States and all the kids on the playground would call me a wetback or an immigrant. And, and then I would go home to Tijuana at night and people would call me a honky. And everybody called me a fagot all day. So no matter what happened, you're always on the outs somewhere. And from a very young age, it can be very difficult to find your place when you're constantly feeling the outsider.

Jeremy

So loneliness is a very, very imprecise word, and it has lots of interpretations. When's the situation, when you felt that there was a 'lack' in your life, that the relationships you wanted didn't marry or keep in line with what you had?

Luis:

I ran away from home as a teenager, I suppose I was maybe 17 or so, or I was still in high school. And I think that this is something that's very common for LGBT folks is that we are taught, now, this is changing rapidly as, as things become more accepted, but we are taught from a very early age to live a double life. We are told that, uh, we are not acceptable and that our thoughts and our personality and our essence must be internalized.

Jeremy

Shame and stigma are two words that come up often in conversations about loneliness. And this really made me examine my own feelings or reactions to seeing people on their own. I realized that I've always been upset by people who seem to be living on their own or eating out on their own or kind of just walking down the street aimlessly. And I always can't help myself, but build a story, whether it's an accurate story or not, that they're lonely, kind of nobody wants their company. And I start going down this rather difficult rabbit hole. And I don't know why I think that beyond the fact that I suppose it's a little bit of evidence that maybe this is just part of their life.

Judy

Well, I mean, it's something that we should address if we are trying to de-stigmatize loneliness. I think there, you have it. If we see somebody walking down the street and you immediately go into this, he or she must be a lonely person and nobody wants that company. I mean, that's, that's stigmatizing. This whole narrative kind of annoys me a little bit because right now I'm in a place where I'm alone. And yes, that does mean I, I do get lonely, but I also wish that there was another narrative out there. That was a little bit more inclusive for people who are on their own. It's not about looking at them like a sad sack loser, or, you know, somebody who can't find somebody else's company, but trying to be a little softer and understanding. Maybe we can try to be a little bit less judgmental and more inclusive and create a place where they can be alone, but also be able to thrive.

Jeremy

I don't disagree Judy with, with what you're saying, that one shouldn't make assumptions. That just because someone's on their own, they are a lonely soul. Of course not. I do have empathy for people who are on their own, if they're lonely and maybe I need to stop assuming that just because they're on their own, they are lonely. If someone is lonely, we mustn't think of them in a negative light. It's just a human condition brought on by any number of circumstances. And the worst thing you can do is to tar them with the loser brush.

Judy

Yeah, I think we're, we are definitely in agreement there.

Jeremy

Loneliness is no one's fault, but loneliness seems to be as a state of mind, it's a subjective feeling that your social relationships are noticeably less than the quantity and quality you want. But truthfully loneliness is just a condition that exists. And up to a point is a useful early warning sign that something important is missing in your life. One of the first things we need to do is to de-stigmatize it, even if only to create a place and have a vocabulary for people to speak about it openly.

Judy

Yes. In fact, that's exactly what I spoke about with Marci Stepak who lives in Montreal. She's a mother of two college age boys, and a writer who has documented her struggles with loneliness. I asked her about how she tried to identify loneliness when she was working with a therapist.

Marci

It was only later after sort of maybe identifying like these feelings or these experiences, that much later on she said, okay, well, if we look at this and how you felt, and do you think that that's a sense of loneliness for you, but that didn't come first, that came much later. And then I had to say it like it was, it was such an odd feeling to sort of say out loud to myself, you know, I am a person with low, like I'm a lonely person at times. It just, I could feel my cheeks getting red and just really uncomfortable with that. But I didn't recognize that. And I didn't have the vocabulary to describe it. I just knew that things I might've said. And was that exactly? I just felt like, you know, sometimes it felt as if people were speaking a different language around me, or there was just this failure to connect or bond with people or something common that other people I've spoken to with loneliness has mentioned that resonates with me is you might be surrounded by people and people you love dearly even, and still feel this sense of isolation or separateness from them.

Judy

Then there's 42-year-old Micaela Blei, a storyteller and educator who found New York city to be a lonely place. So after 20 years of living amongst 8 million people, she left, but not before posting this on her Facebook page, which I happened to come across.

Micaela

People have an easier time talking...

Judy

People have an easier time talking about almost anything except loneliness, attempted murder credit card debt loneliness seems like the last shameful subject, but New York has been lonely for me for a while now. And I'm really looking forward to living a different way. I'm proud and thankful for these 20 years.

Micaela

I love you but goodbye. 

I think that that post was, that I've posted on Facebook was met with some surprise because I've been social. I'm not a hermit. And so I think that's part of it. I think that as a single woman, I'm, I'm single and I'm 42, which is a really specific thing to be. So for example, you know, my friends who love me so much will sometimes ask me about online dating. There was a long time when I wasn't going on any dates online or otherwise. So it can be like, Oh, that will solve loneliness. Like if you can go on dates, then that will help you alleviate your loneliness. That's not really what gets at it, right? That's not really what gets at this fundamental, whatever feeling of isolation or disconnection might be happening. And this was the other thing I was going to say about New York being a lonely place. It doesn't even necessarily correspond with knowing enough people or going enough places I have in my 20 years of living in New York city done tons of things, right? I've I've joined the trapeze community. I've joined the comedy improv community. I've joined the educator community. I've joined the storytelling community. There are all these communities and many people really do feel that sense of community. It's not just everyone dashing from place to place.

Judy

What does loneliness feel like to you?

Emery

Loneliness shows up for me as a lot of pressure and a lot of not rightness. I don't think it's something that anyone knows how to help each other with. I don't think it's a problem to be so it's, it's so easy. It's so easy to talk about heartbreak that whole like friendships are based on helping each other with heartbreak. And sometimes it's terrible advice, but you can sort of take the advice you want. And then with loneliness, it's so personal. It's so individual, it doesn't necessarily have a solution that someone else can suggest.

Jeremy

Look, it sucks to be lonely mostly because like Edna said, at the beginning of this episode, we've all, at some point in our lives experienced what the opposite of loneliness feels like that joyous sense of belonging, that feeling of having a role, that human connection.

Jeremy

A brilliant 22 year old, named Marina Keegan, wrote an essay during her senior year of Yale titled 'The opposite of loneliness.' Marina died in a car crash five days after graduating, but this place she so heartbreakingly describes, this un-lonely place, is where we hope we'll all find ourselves, Judy and I included, by the end of our series of "Is Anybody Out There?" Here's a short excerpt from Marina's essay.

Marina

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that it's what I want in life. What I'm grateful for and thankful to have found at Yale and what I'm scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place. It's not quite love and it's not quite community. It's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together, who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's 4:00 AM and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night, we can't remember. The time we did. We went, we saw, we laughed. We felt. The hats. Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A capella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel love and safe and part of something, even on our loneliest nights, when we stumble home to our computers, partnerless, tired, awake. We won't have those next year. We won't live on the same block as all our friends. We won't have a bunch of group-texts. This scares me more than finding the right job or city or spouse. I'm scared of losing this web, we're in. This elusive indefinable opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

Jeremy

Join us for our next episode of 'Is Anybody Out There?' when I'll speak with Dr. Fay bound, Alberti who took a thoughtful, well-researched dive into this subject, when she wrote the book, The Biography of Loneliness. It might just help us understand exactly what loneliness is.

Dr. Fay Alberti

One of the challenges though, is that if we ask people, if they're lonely and we suggest against this backdrop of loneliness, always being bad, that it is necessarily a negative thing, then people will associate loneliness always with negativity. And they will say yes, when what they could be feeling is anxiety or depression or even nervousness about their place in the world.

Jeremy

"Is Anybody Out There?" was created and written by Judy D'Mello and Jeremy Warshaw.

Judy

This episode was produced and edited by Justin D. Wright, Jessamine Molli and Christian Sawyer. Music by Seaplane Armada.

Jeremy

If you're enjoying this podcast, and we hope you are, please rate us on Apple podcasts.

Judy

And do subscribe wherever you download your podcasts.

Jeremy

For more information about what you heard today, please visit theconnectory.com. Let's stay connected.