The Backpack You Can’t Put Down
It’s Loneliness Awareness Week, and the loneliness I mean isn’t being alone. It’s grieving while everyone is sure you’re coping.
It was the 4th of January 2024, and I sat at home, alone, that evening. I had barely managed to get through Christmas. The trip to Devon the week before the holidays had been good for the change of scenery, but Christmas had been difficult, as I didn’t want to be around people, but also, I did not want to be alone.
Christmas and New Year had now been and gone. I had managed to get out for a few hours on NYE. A last-minute decision, it was good to wear the sparkly silver dress I had purchased just in case, dance with friends and feel for a flicker of a moment that the gaping hole in my chest had filled. Of course, it was still there.
But now we were into January, and everything in life had returned to normal.
On that night, just a few days into the year, I had never felt lonelier.
Not solitude.
Alone.
I could see the dark weeks of January and February stretch out before me like a long, winding road to an unknown destination. Maybe it was better than being broken in the summer, wanting to feel happy when everyone felt happy and alive, amplified the exhaustion of pretending.
I’ve written a little about the lead up to this moment before…
There was an expectation over the summer that I felt I had to be more positive at times. Demonstrate to the world that I was trying to move forward and heal. I would give palatable responses that wouldn’t make friends or family worry, feel sad, or witness their discomfort as they grappled with what to say to me.
The self-abandonment of my own feelings to make others feel okay. Yet, at the same time, this loneliness kept me isolated on a tiny island. From the outside, to others, I was surviving.
“She has been on a yoga retreat, which will sort her out.”
“She’s posted a smiling pic on Instagram; she must be feeling better.”
“She’s booked a trip to Devon; she’s always good at knowing how to move forward.”
Isolation is where loneliness compounds. It’s what gets to you. Because I know you want to feel better, of course, you don’t want to feel like this forever. But you can’t go around sharing the loneliness. It is much better to pop it into an invisible backpack and lug it around with you, not sure where to put it down. Then what happens if you finally put it down for some respite, and someone finds it at the home you’re visiting and looks inside? They would be equally repulsed and frightened by what is in that baggage. If that were the case, they would quickly ask you to leave. Throwing your backpack out after you, down the garden path.
Grief has this effect on people. It is a disease they might catch, too, if they let it get too close to their tightly protected happy space. No dark, nasty grief and loneliness here, please.
“How are you?” becomes a loaded question, and not just for me. When someone really cares, it is filled with hope. The look in the eyes, the promise or the searching.
“Is she okay, really?”
“What do I say if she says she’s still not fine?”
I see the hope, the kindness, the love in it. I want to give them the right answer. I want to be okay. And my true response to that would be screaming that life is unfair, that I hate everything, and why me?
But of course I don’t.
I say, “yes, I feel that I’m getting there.”
Funny, writing this. I’m getting there was a phrase I loved to use.
It gave me a palatable semi-truthful response. Not quite sealing myself into everything is good, but also not passing my backpack to them and saying with a quintessential English accent, “Totally sorry to bother, would you be a dear and hold this for a moment for me? It’s rather damn heavy.”
You and I are being honest right now. I don’t think friends and family, the stranger in the sea, the group of people on the yoga retreat, I don’t think they want the raw, honest contents of your backpack. There is a liminal halfway truth, a response that is not a mask, but it is not “here, let me hand you the nasty black stuff that created this gaping hole in my chest.”
But I have to tell you, we 100% do need those other spaces. The places to take everything out of the bag, one piece at a time. Examine it. Wonder if it’s worth carrying, or if it can be left behind for the next journey. Those places matter, and there the masking isn’t necessary. It is the monster that can show up as it really is. Alone, scared, angry, hopeless, frightened and exhausted.
I can’t tell you how important those non-masking places are for you.
The weight does get lighter, and the bag feels smaller. You might never put it down, but you learn to live with carrying it.
And it means something else too.
You become someone who knows how to hold space for another person, because you have something in your own backpack that can help with what she is carrying.
If this resonated with you, and you’re thinking, well, what now?, here are some next steps for you to explore…
💛 To access support for navigating loneliness, check out the Marmalade Trust.
🔦 Browse my Mental Wealth Resources collection for workshops, guides, and practical tips to help you with whatever might be feeling hard right now.
🕯️Join my next Grief Circle on 28th July at 7pm BST - you can get a ticket here for a one time visit, or upgrade your Coffee with Coops subscription to get access to all our upcoming sessions.
✨ Take a look at my free training - What to Do When Grief Steals Your Spark and How to Get it Back - and see if it helps to lighten the load.
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Great piece of reading.