Nearly two months ago, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, an op-ed appeared in the New York Times that sadly resonated for me. The author checked in on his elderly mother by phone to gauge her health and happiness. She replied, “Don’t worry about me; I have a PhD in loneliness.”
That’s it! I have lived alone for so long now that I know how to do this. No one to touch. No one to share a meal with. No one to share a life with. No one who is checking in to tell me how his day went or to listen to mine.
This is a PhD that is neither striven for nor craved; it is awarded out of sheer endurance. I remain alone, unwilling or incapable of jostling myself out of the trajectory that an unintentional course of life events - divorce, death, drugs – hurled me into.
This is not COVID talking. This is real, every day, pervasive loneliness. COVID just gives me, and many others like me, the unhappy chance to experience it more fully and, perhaps, the permission to say it.
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