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If I was much more social media savvy, I would have known long ago that this week is Loneliness Awareness Week and planned some content around it as way to hook onto the conversation and get more attention for my Instagram. Instead, I found out it was because I kept noticing interesting posts about loneliness, which I thought was just a coincidence or a sign of the times. It wasn’t until I saw a post explicitly talking about Loneliness Week that it all made sense. And because I have been thinking about it all week, I couldn’t help but write today’s newsletter on the subject.
Loneliness is a topic I have written a lot about in my journalism work. I would go as far to say, it is one of my specialist subjects. I wrote this for The Guardian about research into the consequences of social isolation, this one also for The Guardian about the Men’s Sheds movement which helps older men stave off loneliness (Confession, although I didn’t interview him, the guy in the blue top is my dad). I also wrote about the UK’s loneliness minister for the Christian Science Monitor (I was once its London correspondent, randomly!). I wrote this for HuffPost about elderly LGBT+ people and this one for the Guardian on socially isolated new mothers. Here’s another one for The Guardian on a cafe for people with mental health illnesses. The list goes on.
Often in journalism, we end up writing about subjects we know nothing about and we might even have to write about things we don’t even care about. It’s just the nature of the job. But there are certain topics that I often revisit that I have usually pitched myself. That’s because they are issues I really care about or have experience of. It’s definitely no coincidence that I have continued to return again and again to the topic of loneliness.
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Feeling lonely, feeling like I don’t fit in, feeling like the odd one out and feeling second best are recurring themes throughout my lift and that goes for whether or not I have wanted a boyfriend. I talked a few weeks ago about being shamed for not having a boyfriend when I was only 11 years old. The thing is, it wasn’t the fact I didn’t have a boyfriend that made me feel lonely in that moment. It was the feeling of not fitting in and the FOMO that I missed a trip up town with all my mates (it took me a few more months of relentless bullying to realise they were not in fact my friends).
It isn’t always dependent on your living situation either. After going through a bout of depression when I lived alone in Berlin, the first thing I did when I got back to London was find a one-bedroom/studio flat to move into. You might think this was counter-intuitive but I realised when I got back to my flatshare that I had temporarily moved out of in order to spend three months in Germany, that actually there was no going back to having flatmates after experiencing the joy and freedom of living alone. As soon as I moved into my flat, I actually felt less lonely than I had when feeling trapped in a small box room in someone else’s flat (my flatmate was also my landlord). Maybe it’s because I felt more like I had somewhere to belong, which really made me feel so much less lonely.
Both of these stories are actually about not feeling like I belonged, come to think of it. This reminds me of a quote I recently read by Anne Lamott in her book Bird By Bird Instructions on Writing and Life. She said: “All I ever wanted was to belong, to wear that hat of belonging.” I don’t know about you but that line was like a punch to the stomach and perfectly sums up why the feelings I mentioned above that keep recurring are a common theme of my life.
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I should acknowledge, however, that there are particular pain that come with both feeling lonely and also being single when you don’t want to be, especially when all your friends are coupled-up and talking about their partners all the livelong day. I don’t want this newsletter to be too much of a downer though and I also realised that by interviewing people from all sorts of different backgrounds over the years for my articles about loneliness that actually I have learned a thing or two.
Here are a few tips:
Find your tribe. You can have best friends who you love and would never ever replace and yet still crave being around people who just get you in your current circumstances. For me, that was finding some single friends. For others that might be finding some friends who are also brand new mums, or people who get why you’re totally obsessed with bird watching or know what it’s like to move across the world for the first time. Whatever it is, there are people out there who feel exactly the same as you. Find them. If you can’t find them, start your own group and let them find you. When I moved to Bilbao, I started a Facebook group for other English teachers to share resources and meet up. My sister started her own book club when she moved to a new town. A friend started a group for bartender’s in London that has gone onto become a proper association!
Volunteer. Several of the people I have interviewed about social isolation have ended up being helped by connecting with others through volunteering. Volunteering has the dual benefits of not only making you feel better (it’s proven to be good for mental health and wellbeing) but also helping you meet other people. Either by the people you help or the people you do the volunteering with. Having a shared sense of purpose, such as helping improve the local park as in one of the articles above, can also really help.
Tell your friends or family. It can feel hard to admit you are lonely but I really recommend getting used to saying it if you are. Firstly I believe in the power of talking about what is bothering you but also you might find your friend who is married with a bunch of kids really relates because they are feeling lonely in a new community or job or simply because they don’t know anyone else in similar boats to them. Also your loved ones might just not realise that you are feeling the acute pain of loneliness because your social media feed is full of happy pictures!
Remember that nothing is permanent. You won’t always feel this way.
Stay safe,
Nicola
Twitter: @TheSingleSupp | Instagram: @TheSingleSupplement
What caught my attention
I got pregnant by mistake. Was I ready for single motherhood?
This by Sophie Heawood is an absolutely brilliant piece of writing and is an extract from her book The Hungover Games, which is coming out soon and which I have pre-ordered. This stuck out: “With my tail between my legs, I moved back to London and began attending antenatal classes, where the husbands and boyfriends were taught all the helpful things they could do. I experienced the class solely as a guide to heteronormative marriage practices, with me the only single person there, feeling like the extra prick at a wedding … The loneliness of the long-distance runner has nothing on the loneliness of the single person in an antenatal class.”
I think there are readers of this newsletter who are in similar boats to Emma Burnell, the writer of this article. In fact I know there are as there was a conversation on the Facebook group recently. I think only time will tell just how much of an impact the pandemic has had on single people. Anyway, Emma writes: “I’m in lockdown, single and coming to the very end of my viable egg reserve. I don’t know when I will go through menopause, but the start of that process can’t be far away now. I have to be realistic: losing six months, a year or possibly even more, of dating time means that coronavirus has finally robbed me of my last choice around fertility – the ability to change my mind about having children.”
On when muslim women get to talk about sex
I found this article by my friend Tahmina Begum so interesting. She writes: “In 2020, it seems as though Muslim women are no longer accepting of this lack of sexual education and for someone else to provide a pathway for them. If we can’t talk about sex when we’re single or coupled up, we’re going to have to take faith and fucking, two key components of our lives, into our own hands. So where should the seed be planted so that the next generation of Muslim women can access information that does not debilitate their sexuality and cause them to confuse it for shame?”
The lowdown
I have been blown over by the reaction to the writing class that Tiffany Philippou are putting on. It’s all about getting started with writing about your life and ways to get your work published. There aren’t many tickets left so if you are thinking about it, make sure you grab a ticket soon before they go.
Talking about writing stories from my life, I wrote this personal piece about being shamed for having clothes from Primark as a teenager. And don’t worry the girl I describe as my best friend in the article is very much not my friend anymore!
Next week I will have Tahmina Begum, whose article I mention above, as my guest on my Instagram Live Q&A. There won’t be one today as it’s Father’s Day and I’m not going to be in.
I said I would do a hang out this week but I have Zoom events every night this week and so I’m not going to be able to. I will schedule something for the following week.
I’m excited to say I have now done two more interviews for this newsletter with two badass single women. I can’t wait to share them with you. If you have anyone in mind that you think I should speak to for this newsletter, please email me your ideas.
Interviewing more people and commissioning more writers in the future are things that are only going to be possible if more people subscribe to this newsletter so please consider signing up. It only costs £1 a week, which is a lot less than a coffee but makes a huge difference to me and my ability to make this newsletter the best it can be.
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About me
For those who don’t know, I’m Nicola Slawson, a freelance journalist who lives in Shropshire, UK. If you would like to support what I do, please consider subscribing to be a paid supporter of The Single Supplement. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter.
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