The Tranquility of Solitude

[Various Artist]

I cried off a lunch with a friend today, because I turned up and there was a third person there, someone who bores me. The thoughts in my own head are more interesting.

I so hope you said all that out loud when you made your excuses and left, MsD.

Reading this thread, I think I'm starting to realise why so many of us spend so much time on these forums. It's the best of both worlds, isn't it: a bustling virtual community, full of good sorts and every kind of life and interest under the sun – and yet at the same time one which all of us can make an instant break from at any moment of our choosing, simply by closing a browser window or standing up and walking away from the screen. We have complete control over how we present ourselves, how much we reveal, how much 'small talk' we make, who we spend time 'around', etc., with none of that real-life hassle of being actually surrounded by everyone else, getting buttonholed in a corner by someone or having to find things to say when we don't really have the words.

I don't really know how much solitude I 'require', as I rarely get the chance to test this by choice. I'm a weird mix of things in real life: a superficially gregarious, eloquent type who needs human contact, who is nonetheless rather shy, doesn't have a lot of small talk, doesn't drink or otherwise ingest substances that lubricate social interactions and so struggles to feel at home in crowds. I've led a pretty lonely existence for much of my life, have spent a lot of time craving things were otherwise, but at the same time I have ever less tolerance for crowds, cities and so forth – partly because in these type situations I'm forever painfully overaware of myself, always looking in on myself thinking I don't belong there among all these people who are clearly so much better at it (whatever 'it' is) than I am. Part of the reason for needing company of course though is precisely to drown out this pointless kind of internal fucking monologue.

Like many others on this thread, evidently, what I really like is to be alone on my own terms, but not because it's thrust on me. Tricky, innit.

[HORN]

I just want whatever I don't have at that particular moment in time.

I find it's easier that way.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Hmm, I did a bunch of shopping on friday, and it occurs to me that I haven't spoken face to face with another person since. That's really not great.

[Third rate Leszno]

I look at my Gran, who was a proper recluse and never left the house for the last 15 years of her life.

I look at my mother, who has steadfastly refused to join any sort of social group since she moved nearer to me 5 years ago, won't use the bus in case someone talks to her and rarely goes out beyond the shop or trips to the garden centre with me - but becomes most indignant when you might venture to suggest she's lonely.

I look at myself, who views parties as a particularly intense circle of hell, who has realised that a big part of the joy of non league football is not being in a crowd and not having to talk to anyone, who enjoys car rallies because they afford the opportunity to just walk off into the wilds and stand on my own (see also fishing, although I'm lapsed in recent years), and who is rarely happier than when a work trip plonks me in a strange town with no colleagues, so that I can take a book or the latest WSC and go for a solo pub crawl without having to say more than "I'll have a pint of the Old Bollocksack please".

There's a family pattern here which I'm keen not to repeat, but I'm also keen to enjoy my life as much as possible, so it's a bit of a balancing act at times.

[Haddock]

Samuel Beckett on twitter on this very topic. He'll get no disagreement from me

[hobbes]

I used to be really gregarious and outgoing. Life and soul of the party, couldn't do enough for anyone, would never say no if I could help it.
thing is, it was all a put on - it wasn't really me at all.
It ended up being a major contributory factor to a rather unpleasant breakdown (that OTFers current and passim helped me through utterly selflessly to my unending gratitude.) as the psychic burden of continually trying to be someone I wasn't hollowed me out.
Now I'm a lot more "me." Unfortunately "me" is shy, finds talking to people I don't know quite difficult, doesn't really like crowds anymore and finds it tough to make friends.
After my Dad died, my mother systematically drove all their friends away by refusing to pick up the phone unless they did first, never accepting invitations etc. I'd terrified I'll end up the same. I kind of long for the sort of life where you have friends round all the time who just pop in for a cuppa, where you socialise with your neighbours, where you have a family and friends support network around you with other parents etc. to swap chit chat and do favours for. Who you can regularly pop to the pub with, and your kids can run wild together.

Only the idea of actually trying to do that leaves me cowering in existential horror, wanting to reach for the chainsaw.

People often wonder how, given my general antipathy towards the world in general, I can live in London. But that's exactly the point. It's anonymous. No one bothers you. You can have a little corner of solitude amongst the throng. And the museums and theatres are great.

[Aitch]

I enjoy my own company. Sometimes I look at a group of friends/colleagues chatting away and think "I wish I could take part like that". But when I hear what they are talking about and how, I think "Thank fuck I don't have to" and immediately feel guilty because I know my friends and family would like me to socialise in the same way.

[Sam]

I like being on my own when I'm at home at night, which is probably one reason I stay up late after everyone else (when I was younger, my brother and parents, now my girlfriend) has gone to bed. And I'm at home for practically all day every day now, which I find fine. In fact sometimes a friend will drop round at short notice during the afternoon and while I always enjoy seeing them, it can throw me a bit initially - I feel a bit affronted at not being able to do the stuff I had planned for the afternoon, which is invariably nothing very much at all.

All the same I like meeting people, frequently tell Twitter followers who get in touch to ask about recommendations for trips to Buenos Aires to let me know if they fancy a pint, and think I'm pretty talkative once I get going. My girlfriend considers herself someone who gets on well with her friends but is otherwise quite boring and not that open to meeting new people. Of course, I'm English and she's Argentine, so these two self-perceptions actually seem to end up in the same place a lot of the time (although she does think my habit of meeting up with strangers from the internet is a bit weird).

[Satchmo Distel]

MsD makes a good point about recharging but I think it is also about cleaning out all the grime that comes from daily interactions based on putting on a face. Public life is about rituals, and I have always found them excruciating.

Furthermore I think there is a corner of the self that cannot be shared with anyone else, even a spouse, and that corner needs its space to breathe and play and even cry, such as to music.

[SouthdownRebel]

Now I'm a lot more "me." Unfortunately "me" is shy, finds talking to people I don't know quite difficult, doesn't really like crowds anymore and finds it tough to make friends.

People often wonder how, given my general antipathy towards the world in general, I can live in London. But that's exactly the point. It's anonymous. No one bothers you. You can have a little corner of solitude amongst the throng. And the museums and theatres are great.

So, and cross-posting with the LiS thread here, this isn't so much different strokes as it is different solutions to the same problem. I describe myself in exactly the same way.

I get the idea of anonymity completely, I just prefer to be away from people in a more complete sense a lot of the time because that way I can't be annoyed by the empty, shallow, self-obsessed, stupidity of them all. No doubt that's incredibly hypocritical of me, but then when I'm alone I can forget my own flaws and failings too.

But there's also something I find utterly refreshing about finding a spot that is utterly devoid of the noise of human activity. Traffic noise drives me insane if I have to listen to it at close quarters for any length of time. Loud bars and restaurants are definitely not for me. Whereas I could listen to a colony of screaming seabirds for hours, and enjoy doing so.

[Moonlight Shadow]

It's less a ratio for me and more a maximum tolerance of company. I really struggle in company after about 2 hours. By 3 I'm usually desperate for alone time.

I have pretty much the same issue, especially when the company is, to put it politely, not the most stimulating intellectually....there are that many family anecdotes I can stomach, about someone else family...

[Fussbudget]

I look at my mother, who has steadfastly refused to join any sort of social group since she moved nearer to me 5 years ago, won't use the bus in case someone talks to her and rarely goes out beyond the shop or trips to the garden centre with me - but becomes most indignant when you might venture to suggest she's lonely.

To be fair to her, nothing you describe shows that she's lonely. She might be perfectly happy with her own company.

[Chopper]

I’ve gone from being the life and soul of the party/workplace/pub, from 16-48, always gregarious but also selective of whom I got anything like close to – 2 wives (19-29, 32-42), 3 best friends (not forever, 1 from 9-16, 1 from 16-30, and 1 from 30-48), to a virtual literal hermit from 48-now, though not for religious reasons, for physical disability reasons (paralysis from motorcycle accident 15 yrs ago).

Now my human contact is limited to about 2 hours a week max, and I’m mostly happy with that – one of the reasons I didn’t ever make lots of friends still stands, in that in my particular version of reality, not many people are that interesting/attractive/worthy of my time. I know that some people will think that is hideously snobbish/judgmental/#upmyownbum whatever, but it’s who I’ve always been as far back as I remember. I can enjoy almost anyone's company for a while, but it doesn't take long for me to get bored with most.

Currently I’m disappointed enough with the human race by reading the news, watching TV and observing social media to be more than happy that I’m more than happy with my own company. Except when I’m not, at which times the weed helps.

[Third rate Leszno]

To be fair to her, nothing you describe shows that she's lonely. She might be perfectly happy with her own company.

Yes, I should probably have expanded on that a bit more. She is happy in her own company, which is great - but on the occasions when she does come to a family gathering, she chatters away quite happily and enjoys herself - she just won't edge out of her comfort zone to do that very often (well, hardly at all). She has a real interest in family history and a passion for gardening that borders on obsessive, and I just feel she would get so much more out of life if she would join one of the local groups that share these interests, instead of only being able to share them with me, the cleaner and her one remaining really close friend who she speaks to on the phone every week.