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The loss of intimacy…
Relationships are of different kinds. There are those by default i.e. kins. But emotionally and psychologically we can be very disconnected. As youngsters we still fraternise with cousins as familial norms and occasions thrust us into frequent interactions. Later we discover our different temperaments, outlooks and thus family ties by itself no longer binds us.
Then there are friends. Socially and perhaps intellectually you connect with them. Particularly as youngsters they make so much meaning to share your excitement, joys, exploits and pose your worth with. However from my experience & observation shame, sadness & sorrow which you undergo are to be shared more with your immediate family and elders. Probably as you age, very few friends remain or appear in your life whom you can still trust, take into confidence and reveal your vulnerabilities. Showing one’s susceptibilities and weaknesses is not easy in our bourgeois society where success, conquest and winning have to be the goal of all interactions (the zero sum game mindset) and where this norm is reiterated at many levels, overtly or subtly everywhere. Positivity is another geist that envelops our social world. Therefore remorse, regret and misery are just not to be revealed. They make you a loser.
That’s where intimacy comes in and maybe that’s why it is so important to have people you are intimate with…usually that will be your partner as an adult. So even having friends can at best be just practical and utilitarian. Indeed one reason why many don’t keep up with friends because the charade involved in to proclaim friendship becomes difficult to sustain. Unless there’s something emotionally and intellectually appealing. Your spouse and kids are more meaningful to hang around with in such a sense where you are flaws are accepted and tolerated (at least to a greater extent vis your friends, kins or certainly not you work place…unless of course some friend of yours too has faced such tumults and nursing deep grief to commiserate.)
That’s what makes my isolation splendid…actually sorry, miserable and voiding life of all meaning and relevance. A very painful seperation and loss of not just the individual who I loved wholeheartedly but the loss of an entire emotional bonding and being uprooted from an ecosystem that was established in both literal and symbolic ways, has pushed into an bottomless abyss. Having no kids and kinship ties pointless and where friends even as trying to be helpful in many ways but the key emotional and intimate bonding needed to cope with grief, despair and anguish and much needed for healing, is what I sorely lack. Having also failed professionally, the multiple setbacks, losses, humiliation that seem to always hunt and haunt me…like invoking penalties at every corner but yet people counsel to carry on, get over, move on and remain functional and positively ‘normal’. Walking the razors edge…just that medications often numbs me and teflon coats my angst and pain even as my life is severely gashed. 😢#Grief #prolongedanxiety #Loneliness #loser #SuicidalThoughts #Anxiety #failure
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