Human beings need to be touched.
Extreme loneliness can lead to chronic medical conditions (including an increased risk of Alzheimer's); it can lead to mental illness. Loneliness, in a nutshell, can kill you; it can certainly make you wish you were dead.
Remember the old "if a tree falls in the forest..." joke? Well, if a person is completely isolated, all the time, is s/he even still a person? "People" have lives; "people" have goals; "people" have relationships with people they see and talk to and hug; "people" have social lives; "people" have a reasons to live. I have none of those things, really.
I've always believed that solitary confinement was excessively cruel; now that I'm essentially living it (albeit in 1620 sq ft rather than a prison cell), I no longer "believe" that: I FEEL it. My GOD, how can we DO THIS to people? I don't care what crime a person committed - human rights apply to ALL humans. Solitary confinement is not rehabilitative; it's not "reasonably" punitive; it's fucking INHUMANE. I've been doing this for a few months and I'm losing it; we do this to people for YEARS. I cry even harder just thinking about it.
Doug and I were very affectionate with each other, both verbally and physically. As someone who's been starved of affection for large chunks of my life, I felt his affection like a soothing bath of aloe after a bad sunburn. His touch gave me life.
And now? Now I've lost him, so my daily dose of physical and verbal affection is gone. And then a pandemic hit, which means I've lost ALL physical affection from anyone, not to mention all the traditional grief support that people usually get from friends and family. And now, society appears to be on the verge of collapse. If I had Doug, I could deal with the pandemic isolation and the constant stress of everything that's going wrong in this country. But I don't have Doug. I don't have ANYONE. I have to deal with ALL of it completely alone. Completely alone all the time, but for a few minutes on the very rare occasions when I see people in person. IT'S TOO MUCH. I don't know how much more I can take.
Missing Doug, on its own, is more than enough to make me not want to live anymore. But this total and complete isolation with no end I can see, combined with the social upheaval caused by criminals masquerading as public servants and the hatred I see directed at people protesting... it's all damn near turning me feral. That anger I've been writing about? Like my loneliness, it gets worse every day. I wanted to go to the 'I WILL BREATHE' protest in Nashville yesterday (I mean, what do I care if I expose myself to COVID-19, right? Some principles are worth dying for). I chose not to, because I am SO filled with repressed rage that I fear that anyone who sets me off might be in serious danger. I may be old, short, and fat, but do not underestimate the damage I could do with the pent-up fury bubbling just under the surface: If I start hitting something or someone, I may never be able to stop.
How am I supposed to come up with a reason to try and live when I'm drowning in loneliness and all around me is nothing but evil and inhumanity? Yeah, I'm broken, but apparently so is the whole damn world. And that's just more heartbreak on top of the heartbreak I'm already dealing with every waking minute. When I'm not crying for Doug, I'm crying for our collective lack of humanity.
I AM SO DESPERATELY LONELY and there's no end to it in sight. God, I wish there were words that could better describe the despair behind that statement.
Zoom calls don't ease the loneliness. A hug won't ease the loneliness. A THOUSAND hugs won't do it. Because I'm lonely to be held, for a LONG time, by someone who knows me completely and loves me deeply. But he's dead.
I don't know how long I can hold on. Every minute feels like my insides are being ripped out of me. For the first time in my adult life, I NEED somebody to take care of me, because I can't take care of myself. I've been reduced to the emotional equivalent of an overtired toddler in the middle of an epic meltdown, screaming for my mommy to comfort me. But she's dead, too.
Human beings were not designed for this kind of isolation. I was not designed for this kind of isolation. I sure AF wasn't designed for this kind of isolation while also grieving the loss of my beloved husband AND watching the world burn. No, I wasn't designed for this at all. And I honestly don't know how much more of it I have in me.
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