Loneliness

To me there is nothing worse and more self-damaging than being by myself. I don't know when this started, but I have the sense that it has been going on for longer than I have been aware of it.

I hate being alone. I hate shopping alone, I hate being by myself in the office and I hate being alone at home, even when there is a housemate upstairs being pretty darn quiet and a cat at my feet. I am not comfortable being alone and all it leads to is stress and worry for me. I know that for a lot of people, alone-time is personal time, is time to relax and be by yourself. I am happy to take 30-45 minutes a day to have a nice long bath and have my personal time there, not worrying about work or moving or any of the stresses of everyday life. But, when I am by myself for longer than that, it is all that I can think about. Those stresses and more.

I think that it is because I have never really been alone for a long period of time. I moved from a house with my parents to a house with 70 other girls, to a house with 4 housemates. And then I moved to Korea, and for the first time I was really and truly alone. There was no one I could turn to for the first few months and I had no friends. I was utterly miserable until I started hanging out with Jodie and then Patrick and then Geri and Neil and Amy and Jess. Slowly I started making friends, and in between, when I was lonely, there were Skype chats with my mom, my grandparents, my sister, Grant and just about anyone who was online at the time so that I just did not need to feel so alone. Unfortunately, at 10:30 at night, there are not too many people online to chat to.

Now, when I find myself "alone" (that that is in inverted commas since there really is a guy not more than 100m away from me and a cat lying on my feet, which I might mention, is rather uncomfortable considering the heat) all I think about is work and what I feel I have been doing wrong, all the money that needs to be spent on moving (money that I do not have), the fact that I do not have money, and the fact that I am missing all of my friends insanely much.

It is times like these when I truly feel alone, not just in the house, but in the city and the world. I start wallowing and it never leads to anything good. I start thinking of the great friends like Amy and Jess and Jodie and Robyn and Ashlea and wondering why the hell they cannot be here with me in Grahamstown! It would certainly make life a lot easier. I could just phone one of them up and say "hey, I'm lonely. Bring some wine over and let's make a party happen!" I can totally picture Amy and I doing that, probably because we have done it so many times. But here, I do not have a person that I can do that with. I can invite friends over for dinner or drinks or cocktails or a girly night in, but I cannot call someone in the middle of the night and say "I'm bored, let's do something!" I really wish that I could.

Don't get me wrong, I have friends here. It's a similar situation to what I found myself in when I was in Korea. I would often phone Grant up in tears because I felt friendless. The loneliness hits and I just forget about all the good things in my life and I tend to need to have someone remind me of those. Grant tends to be really good at that, but he is out playing Darts at the moment as he does every Wednesday night.

So what does this boil down to? Well, I miss my friends. Also, I need something to do on Wednesday nights to stop me from moping about the house feeling sorry for myself. Jestine? Kath? Any ideas, since you guys are the closest friends that I have in this little town?