Loneliness is a very large beast.

If we’re lucky, we’re born into some sort of family. But then, one way or another, family falls away. We grow up, move on, and create adult lives of our own, whether or not that original family is still with us. The separation from our birth families seems a little like losing a limb in the ghostly pain of its absence. Even if that family still exists, it’s separate now, living its life without you, maybe feeling the same way.

It’s an odd kind of loneliness moving from your starter family into whatever new family you create. Maybe you find a spouse that’s not quite the right fit, or you don’t find one at all, or you get really lucky with someone and make a kind of home inside your heart you’d never known before. The ice of loneliness starts to melt off of you. The busyness of life becomes a family. Or friends do. Or work.

Then loss steps in. Maybe once or -- depending how long you’ve lived -- multiple times. The imperfect relationships, the beautiful ones, the work, the friends, they disappear in some way. A person important to you dies and it’s, among many things, a big reminder that all of this is temporary. No matter how much of a home someone makes in your heart, one of you is going to disappear someday.

Always, though, we are left with ourselves. Whether your chest is filled with ice or love, it’s still there, providing you a strange kind of companion. You are the one person you can be certain to never lose. The only one who will be there from the moment of your birth to the moment of your death. We’re born alone and we die alone. So why can being alone feel so lonely?

I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to love others in a big way without losing a limb of our own when they die. I’m not suggesting that grief is avoidable. I know it’s not. But can we find a comfort in ourselves that’s at least as large as the one we seek in someone else? Might this most steady companion bring the best possible relief in all of life’s discomforts, including grief?

I don’t know with certainty. I’ve spent an awful lot of my adult time searching for people who could make me feel shielded from the scariest parts of life, as though having family and friends around me would protect me from my own fears. But this is not a job for others, and no one else can promise you that they’ll never die and return you to yourself.

The best we can do is try to make this singular human life we’re all separately sharing feel safe and loved and comforted. See what it takes to make the ice melt inside on your own. Then keep loving others anyway.

More:

How Long Does Grief Take?

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