A couple of years ago, in an email exchange with my friend, he suggested a movie. Because so much of our friendship was subjected to the idea of asking each other to watch a show or a movie or read a book, I gave in. My friend has a better record of following my list than I do. So even though I was in a low state, I still put on the sad movie.
It was a movie called Shell. To me, the movie felt slow and lonely. It was based around an isolated petrol station and dealt with different shades of loneliness. The girl goes to lengths to deal with her loneliness. And by lengths, I mean lengths.
When I finished the movie, I wanted to throw my laptop. Not because I was lonely myself. I just didn’t like the way the girl behaved. I understood what the director was trying to portray, but, to me, it was an absurd way of portraying loneliness. I couldn’t understand why she would behave the way she did and, frankly, I didn’t want to.
So I emailed my friend that I hated the movie, the girl was very dumb, and you both need God.
We didn’t talk for a while after that. I did say sorry once, I guess.
But now I understand loneliness in a way I didn’t understand it before. Not the same loneliness the character in the movie was dealing with. I still think the girl’s choices were absurd. But I understand some of the loneliness behind them now.
At the time, I didn’t understand how loneliness could make a person behave strangely. I thought loneliness was simple. You were alone, you wanted company, you found company. What else was there to understand? A lot, apparently.
Loneliness is a mighty insect. It eats you up slowly, and in ways you don’t realise are possible until they are happening to you. There is a certain kind of loneliness that comes in your twenties. It isn’t necessarily the loneliness of having nobody. You can have friends, family, people who love you, a phone full of contacts, and still feel terribly alone. Maybe that is what makes it such a strange kind of loneliness. Your twenties are supposed to be full of people. New friends, old friends, colleagues. Birthdays, weddings, dinners, group chats, last-minute plans. Just people. Lots of them. That’s how I imagined my twenties would be.
It wasn’t all that, though.
Your friends start getting busy with their own lives. Someone gets married. Someone moves abroad. Someone gets a new job. Someone falls in love and disappears into it. Someone has a child. Nobody really leaves. People just slowly become occupied by lives you aren’t part of every day anymore. The friendship is still there, somewhere. It just stops being so easy to reach.
Loneliness has a strange way of creeping into adulthood. Suddenly, you’re stuck in the same loop of everyday, mundane life. Work. Home. Dinner. Sleep. Then a weekend with no plans. A birthday with a handful of wishes and no cake. A Friday night spent scrolling through everyone’s stories while you’re still in the same place you were on Monday.
Sometimes it looks like a friend you haven’t spoken to in months. Sometimes it looks like having things you want to tell people and no one particular person to tell them to. And sometimes working from home can look a lot like a life of a prisoner.
And maybe loneliness in your twenties isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong. Maybe it’s just what happens when everything is changing at once. It’s part of growing up. Growing up at a time when third places hardly exist, when social media gives you the sensation of a community without necessarily giving you one. In your twenties, you’re outgrowing older versions of yourself, trying, failing, beginning again. Moving to new places. Making sense of relationships on a deeper level. Figuring out what stays and what doesn’t.
I suppose growing up is partly learning to find a village of your own. And perhaps learning how to stay in it.
I still haven’t found my village.
But I am looking.
Until then, I’m trying to live with myself. And my loneliness. I still haven’t told my friend any of this. Maybe I should. Whether I tell him or not, I think I understand loneliness a little better now. And maybe that’s all I have to say about it for now.
I think about Shell sometimes. Not because I suddenly like the movie. I don’t. And I still think the girl was very dumb.
But I understand something now that I didn’t when I watched it. Loneliness isn’t always rational. It doesn’t always make you behave sensibly. Sometimes it makes you reach for the wrong people, the wrong things, the wrong versions of yourself, simply because they make you feel less alone.
I didn’t understand that then. I understand it now. Maybe that is another strange thing about your twenties; you spend so much of them becoming the kind of person who can finally understand things you once couldn’t.
Including loneliness.
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