Helen Speaks

In the early 2000s, I spent a year living and working in a new city. I lived in a bedsit flat, with no shared space. I worked in a small team who were nice enough but I didn’t get any of their jokes, and I didn’t play football, so I was the quiet one in the corner who people invited to things out of politeness… And who attended those things out of reciprocal politeness.

I used to go out a lot in the evenings, but mostly by myself. It was the early 2000s so Borders bookshop opened until 10pm.

I was walking back from town, alone, to my bedsit flat. It was cold, crisp, and dry, as that city so often was, and my room was probably cold. (I discovered maybe a month or two months after finding my room incredibly cold that I could turn the radiators up. Oops).

I heard someone say my name, with that sort of surprised delight when you see someone who you didn’t expect to see, but are pleased to find.

I looked up – I hadn’t recognised the voice, and it turned out they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to someone else, another Helen, greeting her warmly.

That made sense to me. In that moment I found myself deeply wishing that someone would greet me like that. I wished that someone would see me walking down the street and be delighted I was there, want to join me – want me to join them! But I also felt – knew – that it was incredibly unlikely.

I was alone.

Bad advice: Don’t be lonely

I intended these “Bad Advice” posts to be calling out those platitudes and axioms that oversimplify an issue or just don’t work… In this case, I didn’t have a specific example so much as a YouTube video of a talk supposedly about loneliness but given by someone who skipped all the vulnerability and talked about nights out with her friends and discussions with her partner.

Honestly, there’s no real great advice for loneliness. I suppose the usual nuggets of wisdom are things like “You need to put yourself out there”, “You need to just give people a chance”, “You need to fake it till you make it”, etc. But the point is, when someone is feeling very lonely, they don’t want to be told what they are doing wrong… They just want to not feel as lonely anymore. Which means that the kindest thing we can do is to just be kind. To listen. To empathise. And to help them feel less alone.

And sometimes, the kindest thing you can do is to be vulnerable. Let the mask slip and be honest about how you feel – it will help someone feel safe to do the same.

During some of the lonely times of my life, I would ask myself why this was happening to me. Was I too weird, so people didn’t want to be friends with me? Or too shy, so people didn’t connect with me? Was the problem actually other people? Was it society as a whole? Or is loneliness just one of those things?

And on reflection, the answer is, well, yes, a little of all of those.

Was I too weird, so people didn’t want to be friends with me?

“Weird” feels like a very loaded term, but honestly, it’s ok to be weird. “Weird” is just what my own ignorant and insecure brain called being emotional, being interested in niche topics, thinking hard about social issues, reading poetry for confidence, sometimes missing social cues, having an accent that seemed to change wherever I was and had people thinking I was American for some reason… Being neurodivergent. I feel like now I’m old enough to call it eccentricity, which sounds much classier anyhow. And I like being eccentric. I like eccentric people! But sometimes being eccentric can be hard.

I just want to feel, safe in my own skin
I just want to be, happy again
I just want to feel, deep in my own world

But I’m so lonely I don’t even wanna be with myself anymore

On a different day if I was safe in my own skin
Then I wouldn’t feel, lost and so frightened
But this is today and I’m lost in my own skin

And I’m so lonely I don’t even wanna be with myself anymore

Dido, “Honestly OK”

When I look back at lonely times in my life, often the loneliness is walking alongside a deep sense of shame.

I’d try to make friends but also spend the entire time being stiff and reserved in the hope they didn’t notice how very weird I was. Or often I was just trying to hide how confused or behind I felt, or was.

The loneliness wasn’t really about wanting people to accept me as I was… It was about wanting to be a different person… It was about hoping they’d see me as perhaps a slightly better version of me, for a very subjective value of better.

As time has passed, I’ve realised that in many ways, the problem wasn’t that other people didn’t want to be with me… The problem was that I didn’t want to be with myself.

Was I too shy, so people didn’t connect with me?

I mean, sometimes. I feel like too many of us, especially those of us who feel like we are weird, approach life like a job interview, trying to turn up to new friendships looking smart, saying all the right things, hoping we’ll be accepted.

This approach feels safe but it’s terrible. We aren’t just lonely when we don’t get to see people, we are also lonely when we see people but we can’t be ourselves with them, because we’re scared of scaring them off.

We can also be reserved if we’ve been treated badly in the past. Which brings me to…

Was the problem actually other people?

Sometimes other people are just arseholes. I once did a temporary job at a primary school and, since it was during the pandemic, I didn’t speak to many other adults other than the one other temporary new starter. She didn’t like the school, didn’t like any duties she had to do, asked me if I knew “what was wrong with” a girl with special educational needs. She got annoyed when I was apparently slowing the students down from eating because I was being friendly and learning their names at lunchtime.

And I had this peculiar variety of loneliness where I felt I had to have my only professional working relationship with someone I didn’t like. And during the pandemic, where we all needed kindness and human contact (ew no touching though), so I didn’t want to be rude or hostile to her, even though I also thought she was terrible.

That said, it’s harder when you’re just not sure why someone doesn’t want to talk to you. One experience I’d had every now and again as a child or teenager was having a moment when I discovered I’d been suddenly excluded, and not knowing why. Being the one member of the group not invited to a sleepover, or discovering people I thought were my friends didn’t want me around. Or just being in a space where no one thought to say hello, but carried on their conversations happily while I sat there, awkward and alone.

The problem is, people aren’t perfect. Especially children and teenagers. We react emotionally, act selfishly and often don’t even notice others would benefit from our kindness. This isn’t a nice truth, but it can at least be helpful. Sometimes, especially when we’re lonely, we can feel hurt when someone ridicules us or pushes us out, and then drive ourselves up the wall just trying to win their approval. And on those occasions, it is useful to remember that sometimes people are just arseholes.

We don’t have to make everyone happy. We can just focus on doing what we know to be right.

Was the problem society as a whole?

So, I figured out why my life seemed to fall apart every time I made a big change, moved to a new city or had to juggle extra commitments. I had undiagnosed ADHD. Thank you, every teacher who told me I was being lazy and needed to try harder, for avoiding giving me this terrible label (ahem, slightly sarcastic there). Sorry about that, I think it was actually a bit of an unfair comment. Our ideas about neurodivergence are much more nuanced than they were when I was at school. I had a lot of really great teachers too.

A lot has also been written on the fact that social media can compel us to present a highlight reel of our lives and then assume that everyone else is having a better time than us. There’s also the way that so many of our conveniences encourage us to not interact with others. I feel like “Is loneliness a problem of society” could be about 15 more blog posts because obviously it is, and yet…

Is loneliness just one of those things?

Walked out this morning, don’t believe what I saw

Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore

Seems I’m not alone in being alone

Hundred billion castaways looking for a home

Sting, “Message in a Bottle”

Years after my lonely placement year, looking back at the strangeness of that time, I wondered what I would say to my younger self.

I’d like to advise her that more people cared about her than she realised, that she could actually ask for help, and to get counselling and look into an ADHD diagnosis.

But most of all, I’d like to say thank you.

I am who I am partly because of what I did and learned, who I met and spent time with, and all of the time I spent alone. I got better at cooking, read a lot of books, wrote, thought, and even had a surprising moment of discovering a vocation that year. And I did have more friends there than I thought. I do think that some of the loneliness was about not wanting to be with myself. But actually, I’m all right. I’m not too weird for me to be friends with me, and that’s what matters.

Thinking over the lonely times, I know that loneliness can be survived. It gets better with time, with honesty, with the kindness of others and with the kindness we give to ourselves. But I don’t think it can be avoided, drowned out by spending time with people we don’t really connect with, turning to things that numb us out or distract us… We just end up lonely by a different route.

But, we can embrace our oddities, our eccentricities, our weirdness, and remember that our fellow weirdos are out there.

We can remember our own values and truths, think about making things better where it matters rather than wasting our time on people who don’t care and aren’t worth being appeased.

We can make society better… or at least try…

And we can be kind – to others, and ourselves.

What helps when you feel lonely?

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