My loneliness is killing me, and why the hell are we so avoidant of strangers? (It's not just me, right?)

Part personal narrative about loneliness, part brief reflection on the strange sociology of why we are so afraid to answer the door and smile at strangers.

I ended my relationship of eight years in January for many reasons, but one of them was that I had finally crystallized a vision for my future, which was incompatible with his. The vision is basically two-fold: one, I want a partnership that is creatively and intellectually productive; two, I want a cottage on the Irish coast and a cabin in the woods, and I want to one day retreat to either of these remote dwellings and never (ok, infrequently) look back. Of course, I have no idea if this will come true, but it’s what I want.

Recently I have been sad, and I have been increasingly lonely. I’m working towards a career goal that I don’t know if I am truly cut out for, or even want. I have no real interest in dating, certainly not in hooking up with strangers. I moved back to my parents’ house in suburban Connecticut after my breakup, which I’m grateful that I can do, but many days all I see are my parents and maybe my niece and nephew. Two of my three best friends (who are frankly all so dear to me they’re more like sisters at this point) live far away, and I only see the one that is close by once or twice a week. My siblings are 10 and 12 years older than me with their own families. I’ve seen some old friends here and there, but nothing really sticks.

I’m building my life back from the bottom up, and sometimes it honestly feels like I’m restarting at 21, when my ex and I got together. I’m realizing how atrophied I am in so many parts of my functioning. In my mind, I still conceive of myself as the highly relational, extroverted girl of my younger years, but in action, I have become extremely reclusive. There are many reasons why that I am aware of (habitual social avoidance after trauma basically) but it’s weird to really wrap my head around it. I kind of don’t even know how to fix it anymore, and sometimes I wish I could just embrace it.

And then when I’m really heartbroken, existentially angsty, uncertain about commitment to a career, as I have been the last couple weeks, I wonder if I should just say Fuck it, save up a lot of money, and move to the middle of nowhere completely alone to basically read, write and rot.

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Once upon a time a decade ago, as a junior in college, I became acutely and briefly obsessed with three topics: the sociology of singledom, the epidemic of loneliness, and the importance of intergenerational relationships. I was in an era of my life where I was quite lonely, despite having friends and working two highly social jobs. I wavered between two desires for myself: live life alone forever, or somehow get all of my friends to live in a big commune, kind of like a dorm, but better.

After a chaotic first teenage relationship that made me (falsely) believe I am fundamentally evil and thus not cut out for love, I functionally swore off intimate relationships. I would imagine myself in the future and figured I would be like the old women I was reading about in these studies: in an apartment somewhere, isolated, trying my best to stay busy, and having a phone call with my nephew once a week. I felt a mixture of dread and relief at the thought.

As for the desire to move all my friends together in a big apartment complex or something like that—who in college didn’t want this as they approached graduation? It’s the dream, isn’t it? You don’t need to lose touch with anyone. Your life kind of just keeps going on with the same cast of characters, but now you’re working instead of going to class (and also working). It’s a reasonable enough desire. At that age, I was loosely tied to my family. My friends were everything to me. I couldn’t imagine a life without my friends. And many of my friends felt similarly.

The dream never actualized, though I did live with two friends after graduation, which ended in psyche-destroying chaos, something I should have anticipated given the patterns of the characters in play. Alas. My other friends had similar roommate-friend meltdowns. We’ve all heard plenty about terrible roommates. We’ve even sometimes been the terrible roommate, probably. With age and experience, the idea of living in some kind of pseudo-tribe-cum-commune based on fictive kinship actually seems like a terrible idea now. And anyway, my friends are all too far away and settled in their lives for such a dream to come true.

It occurs to me my brief intellectual obsession with those three topics in college was almost prophetic. Here I am, a single person, lonely, living with my 65+ year old parents who take care of my 2-year-old nephew and 5-year-old niece every workday. I long for the day I can live in a one-bedroom apartment by myself, and yearn for something even more remote eventually. I want companionship, but my hope for that waxes and wanes.

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I’ve been thinking about moving to a small city, but not quite yet. The timing isn’t right, nor are my finances. I have asked the internet where, and the most popular suggestions were Pittsburgh, PA, Minneapolis, MN, Louisville, KY, and Cincinnati, OH. I have no idea if I’d like any of these cities, given I have been to none of them. Truthfully, none of them really sparkle with potential that much when I read about them. Maybe I’ll end up in Omaha, NE. I liked it there. Feel free to suggest other options.

Anyway, I think about moving to a small city and I sort of groan. I don’t really want to, but I imagine I must in order to find a life partner. A city will have the highest density of single people my age who also aren’t the insufferable big city type a la New York or LA or whatever. If I’ve got some Soul Mate Out There Waiting For Me (eh) then I’ve got to go put myself out into the world so we can Find Each Other. I highly doubt I will find him at a brewery in Pittsburgh or a bar in Minneapolis or whatever though. But also I would not really want to find myself in either of those places either.

Last week I decided to Socially Challenge Myself: I would go downtown by myself and walk into a bar and introduce myself to a stranger. I did this on a whim at midnight on Saturday. This probably seems like an extremely easy thing to do to the vast majority of people. Yet, I walked by the two open bars four times and was stricken with a combination of anxiety and repulsion so powerful I could not enter either building, and as soon as I made eye contact with anyone I wanted to immediately return to my car. I felt exceedingly alien and then embarrassed that it felt so impossible to just go talk to someone. In retrospect this was a very silly challenge. I literally do not like to drink and would never have done this at any point in my life. Socializing over alcohol is something I actively dislike doing, so it was a misguided attempt at Self-Empowerment.

But, it heightened my already intense feelings of loneliness and alienation. I ended up crying in my car afterwards as I listened to a friend group loudly laughing together right by my window. I was like, How am I almost 30 and I still can’t seem to figure out where I really belong? It’s extremely embarrassing to cop to this feeling. It sounds so painfully adolescent, but it plagues me, and I know (ironically!) I am not alone in this. I’m trying to address it by making a career move. I’ve got things In Motion, but man. When I think about what I wish I could do, and get as fantastical as possible about it, big time fiction-brain thinking: I wish I could live remotely, on the outskirts of some micro-society, and function like a witch in the woods that people come to when they need wisdom or guidance or temporary retreat.

Honestly when I look at the entirety of my life, the most spiritually useful function I serve in people’s lives, the weird lifelong pattern of being cast into social exile, it seems like a natural endpoint for me. Being a mystic in the woods at the end of the world seems like the only thing I’d be any good at, and I can just turn God into my husband or something. I don’t know. If nuns can do it with Jesus why can’t I? Anyway, it would be great to just enjoy decorating my little cottage with antiques and nice paintings and write a lot and occasionally host people in need of counsel. That would pretty much meet all my needs I think.

But that is, of course, a fantasy. For one, I do not think I’m qualified for such a role! And anyway, that role doesn’t even exist, really. That’s endemic to the issue. Why can’t we just live in tribes again? But also if we did I’d probably be dead for a variety of reasons. And although it would include me being geographically remote, I serve a social function, meaning I actually must have deep ties to a group. This is precisely the thing I seem to struggle with these days. Anyway, it’s a fantasy, but it’s still one I like to indulge, and it’s one I like to escape into when I feel doomed.

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Last night, I achieved my highest score yet on a practice test for an exam I’m preparing to take in September. I was proud of myself for a moment, but then when I returned from my intellect into my body and the world around me, sorrow won over pride. I told my family about the high score and they were excited for me. I put some hazelnuts and rainbow sprinkles on an ice cream bar to reward myself with a Sweet Treat. Yet, none of it felt particularly satisfying. I honestly did not care. I tried to manufacture a sense of reward, and I couldn’t. Truthfully, I just felt so…lonely.

I am, for reasons that aren’t worth explaining, the most purely heartbroken I have perhaps ever felt in my entire life. I’ve tried identifying what Core Trauma this situation seems to be reactivating and after many hours wrestling with this question, I have come to understand that there literally is not one. It is not a stick in an old wound, it is a knife inflicting a new one through the severance of the bond that had become most precious to every part of me. The depth of pain I feel seems undue, but emotionally, I cannot outrun reality. Life feels gray and plodding after losing such deep companionship. I go on walks and long drives, pray, try writing, watch movies, try daydreaming about my future, clean and organize, study, do weird escapist erotic fantasizing (eugh), but I am plagued by a seemingly never-ending sensation of having the wind knocked out of me. I feel kicked in the gut, overcome by dread. The color has been drained from my vision. This pain is plaguing my productivity, and it is also contributing to my simmering desire to commit to the remote witch bit.

After staring at my ceiling for a while, I decided I needed to get out of my house. I climbed into my car and half-decided to drive an hour away to the shore. It was less of a decision than an intuition that I followed on autopilot. I joked online that my drives lately are basically just me switching between belting along to Defying Gravity from Wicked and Let It Go from Frozen to try inducing mania sufficient to propel me into following a delusion of grandeur such that I achieve my fantasy vision of isolating myself from the rest of society. It’s a bleak state of affairs in here. I can’t always be crying to Mitski or Lana Del Rey or something Cool. I must use the musical gifts given to us by Stephen Schwartz and Robert and Kristen Lopez to regain a sense of power over myself !

Anyway, I got down to Old Lyme and wasn’t entirely sure if I would actually stop by the ocean or not. I mostly just followed the impulse to admire the Lyme Academy of Art campus at night. I drove around aimlessly for a while after that and then figured it would be genuinely stupid to be like five minutes from the ocean and not at least go by it. I pulled to the end of a street with a threatening No Parking Or You Will Be Towed sign, but I figured at 10:30pm it wouldn’t be a big deal.

I ran down to the water, which took almost no time at all. I dropped my belongings into a pile in the sand, and half considered taking my pants off to go swimming, but then decided against it. The water was comfortably warm. Also, I had forgotten how rocky the Connecticut shoreline is. In California, the sand was nice and smooth. I used to live there with my ex-boyfriend. In Santa Cruz, my apartment was a seven minute walk to the beach. It was amazing, and I still feel grateful I got to live there even though I also sort of regret the whole ordeal.

The only time I’ve been to the beach this summer is in Hilton Head, SC with my best friend and her family for a brief vacation. I had forgotten how much the ocean soothes me. I decided to walk along the full length of the beach and enjoy the quiet ebb and flow of the water. I got about 10 steps down and panicked about my belongings. I wasn’t mindful enough of how close they were to the water, and I was not certain if the tide was coming in or out. I ran back, found the pile, and moved it closer to my car.

It was then, in this moment, it occurred to me: Holy shit, did I just lose my phone? Yes, indeed. I did. I had not secured it in my bag, I had merely dropped it on top of everything, and when I picked up the pile, the phone naturally fell into the sand. I laughed and said out loud to myself, “Molly, you are such a fucking idiot.”

It was very dark on this beach, naturally, and while there was skull-piercing white beams from loud streetlights stretching down along parts of the sand, the brightness merely intensified the darkness alongside it. In short, I could not see a fucking thing, and I could not remember where on this empty, poorly-lit beach I had originally put my stuff. I got on my hands and knees and started feeling around on the sand. I quickly gave up. I paced back and forth like a dumb animal, looking for a tool to use, some resourceful solution, a magical way to capture the awful light and illuminate the shadows, but there it was hopeless.

Then, I saw a gaggle of kids on bikes pulling up to the house closest to the beach, right next to where my car was parked. I considered yelling out to them, then become aware of the fact that I am an almost 30 year old woman in an oversized, worn down Wizard of Oz T-shirt from 1997 that has holes in the chest, and too-big fleece Snoopy pajama bottoms, my hair in a ratty-looking messy bun and a bare face. In short, I look insane, and it is nearing 11pm, and I am alone on a beach, and I have no idea how the fuck to find my phone. I briefly considered letting the ocean swallow it. In a way, it would be so nice to simply lose this stupid rectangle of mind-destroying technology, but of course, I wouldn’t actually lose it. I’d just need to shell out money I don’t have for a new one. I wouldn’t lose my tie to this hand casino, just whatever photos, videos and writing that isn’t living in the strange liminal data space of my iCloud.

I paced around for another two minutes, dragging my feet, grabbing down at shadows in the grooves of the sand that I hoped were the outline of my phone. No such luck. I stared at the house a few hundred feet away from me that the kids went into after getting off their bikes. All of the lights were on, as well as a large TV. The kids had just got home, and I saw an adult follow behind them. I realized this is it. This is my only option. I must go knock on the door of this extremely expensive beach house looking like an utter disaster, late at night on a Tuesday, and ask for a flashlight. Perhaps this does not seem like a nightmare situation to most people, but I felt like I might actually die.

Instead, I was warmly greeted by an older man who looked for a flashlight, and returned with a gaggle of kids who asked if they could help me find it, and no one talked to me like I was an insane monster but instead like I was literally just a person. Because I am. I am literally just a person. The kids looked at me like the character who unlocked an exciting Quest in the Video Game of Life. I laughed with the kids and lamented reliance on tech with the older man, and in less than a minute one of the kids found it with the help of the flashlight. I thanked them and they ran back into the house, and the older man followed slowly behind them, and said “You have a good night, dear,” and I wondered why the hell I am so terminally afraid of people.

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I understand much of my social anxiety is born of my own individual dysfunction, but there is cultural influence. There is the meme of millennials avoiding the phone, or hiding when they hear the doorbell ring, and unfortunately yes, that is Literally Me. I will frequently cross the street to avoid having to talk to someone in my neighborhood. There is a bizarre epidemic of not just isolation born of our living situations or work or whatever, but an actual epidemic of active avoidance. The alienation we experience is not only a function of material forces or structures, but some bizarre culture that has indoctrinated us into choosing avoidance over connection.

I think back to my trip to Ireland last year, though, and recall how different it was in this way. People smiled at me and chatted with me frequently, on the street, on the way up and down Croagh Patrick, at the grocery store. And I actually was not afraid at all. I felt comfortable and happy, and when I returned to America, not having that was a devastating loss. I tried to keep it up by smiling at people who I walked by in my own neighborhood, and most of the time they’d quickly look away to avoid eye contact. Now, I have reverted to following suit.

I reflect back on my fantasy life, escaping to some remote edge of society. It is impossible, in truth. I read about people who live remotely, and rurally, and I discuss it with people on Instagram who live that way. Someone recently told me that she feels more bonded to the people in her remote town than she ever felt in a city, even though she is further away from everyone in physical distance. I think about how I’d like exactly that.

I don’t actually yearn for eternal isolation, I yearn for belonging and connection without the fear of being banished. I realize that honestly, being fucking cancelled has done a number on me, such that my instinct is to just banish myself before anyone else can. For all the tears I’ve shed about it, all of the writing I’ve done, all of the people I’ve talked to about it, I’m still not truly over it. If I want to survive this next part of my life, I need to figure out how to move past all of the dysfunctional habits I learned to cope with that pain. And I also don’t want to resolve myself to once again, as I did as a teen, deciding I am not cut out for intimate love. This is not true. I am built for it all. If I didn’t desire it, I would not be so fucking afraid. I would be indifferent, and I’m not. I’m lonely, and I want to love people just like I used to.

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Wanting to belong and connect is literally what everyone wants. Even if we have memes about wanting to be alone, the people who truly have a complete absence of desire for social connection are few and far between. They are abnormal. That is not normal human psychology. That isn’t a condemnation, just a fact.

So for the rest of us, why have we come to prefer avoidance of social engagement with strangers? How often do you prefer meeting your delivery driver at the door versus them simply dropping off your food anonymously? Do you prefer texting over calling, and if it’s because it’s “easier” is that because you want to avoid the discomfort of a phone call?

I imagine there are numerous cultural reasons for this propensity towards avoidance. I’ll mull over a few and maybe one day investigate it more thoroughly and put out a longer essay.

One, it seems it is obviously downstream technology that makes avoidance or isolation convenient, thus inherently rewarding. Consider DoorDash, dating apps, maps on your phone, self-checkouts. Basically everything in the world is on your phone that means you can avoid asking anyone for anything.

For millennials in particular, I think a major contributor to this phenomenon is the whole stranger danger culture we grew up in. We were literally socialized not to talk to strangers out of fear. Sure, we may no longer consciously fear talking to strangers from a place of concern for our safety. But we got into the habit. And while we don’t necessarily fear threat to our personal well-being, we certainly fear the awkwardness.

I look at myself: the entire reason I was going to avoid asking for help at the beach was because of how potentially awkward it might feel. Same thing with the difference between the stranger-socializing in Ireland versus when I returned to California. I tried reproducing in the US the same behavior I had grown quickly accustomed to in Ireland, and it was met with little micro-rejections, and a feeling that ultimately boils down to awkwardness.

I wonder if we are overly sensitive to feeling awkward or rejected. The cost of feeling awkward—which I think is really just an uncomfortable cousin of social rejection—is higher than the reward of the convenience of retreating into isolation. In a society where most of your basic needs can be met without needing to interact with anyone, why risk the immediate discomfort of feeling awkward? If there is no sufficient-enough threat to motivate us into changing our social habits, then why bother? We can be lonely and satisfied-enough at home alone without talking to anyone. We can survive well-enough feeling alienated. I can still get food, information, and even the semblance of connection online, without needing to make awkward eye contact or smile at someone who might respond by looking away, which after enough times, makes my brain feel like I’ve just been rejected and my selfhood denied. Or if I’m really depressed, all it takes is like, one time.

Ultimately this seems to just be a byproduct of human psychology interacting with this environment we’ve created, that reinforces the behavior. We will take avoidance of immediate discomfort over the long-term benefit of doing the mildly uncomfortable thing. Having pleasant interactions with strangers is extremely beneficial; it improves a sense of belonging, reduces loneliness, boosts your mood, much more.

If the repeated awkward rejections from strangers are like death by a thousand cuts to your sense of social belonging and self-esteem, repeated connective interactions are like a long-term series of inoculations against loneliness and alienation. Of course, in a culture where it’s unpredictable whether the stranger you’ll try talking to is bought into the avoidance culture and will respond in a way that feels like rejection…it may feel safer to avoid it all together. But, it honestly isn’t.

I guess the individual solution to improving your sense of belonging in the alienated technohell of 2023 is the same solution to getting to the gym or doing literally anything good for yourself, which is to fight against your brain’s natural wiring that has been hacked by technology and an environment that rewards ultimately self-destructive behavior through comfort and convenience. Practice the healthy habit that is immediately uncomfortable but good for you long-term, and somewhere along the way hopefully the discomfort is outweighed by your ability to finally see the benefit and feel pleasure sufficient to make the other option seem entirely unappealing.

And honestly, maybe try striking up conversation with the elderly. As a population, seniors are quite lonely, and they also are less spoiled by this strange culture and the downstream effects of technology on us whippersnappers. The importance of intergenerational relationships! Look at that, the topics in this essay are all connected, just like we should be.