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Feb 26, 2010, 07:22 AM
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Quote:
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“One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.” ~Charles Horton Cooley
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Many cannot understand how difficult it is at times for those of us plagued by mental illness to be sociable. Most of my siblings no longer talk to me. I do not necessarily take umbrage at their apparent indifference. Sometimes an illness is just hard to figure out.
After being quite isolated for well over a decade, this too speaks to the plight of those who do not venture out of their comfort zone:
Quote:
Loneliness of Spirit:
Deeper than the Reach of Love
by James Park
Loneliness is an aching void in the center of our beings,
a deep longing to love and be loved,
to be fully known and accepted by at least one other person.
It is a hollow, haunting sound sweeping thru our depths,
chilling our bones and causing us to shiver.
Is there a person, anywhere,
who has never felt the stab of loneliness,
who has never experienced
the eerie distance of isolation and separation,
who has never suffered the pain of rejection or the loss of love?
The final rupture or breakdown of a valued loving relationship,
the sudden death of someone who was close and special,
an unavoidable separation from a loved one
—these things strike loneliness into our hearts,
the intense experience of the absence of that specific person.
Besides longing for a specific person,
sometimes loneliness has no name attached.
This is the general feeling of being alone,
isolated, separated from others.
And there is a third kind of loneliness—existential loneliness—
which is even deeper and more pervasive than either of the first two.
It often disguises itself as longing for a specific person
or pretends to be yearning for contact with anyone,
but this deeper lack or emptiness-of-being
is not really a kind of loneliness at all.
Being together with other people, even people we intensely love,
does not overcome this deep incompleteness of being.
This inner default of selfhood has never been solved by relationships,
no matter how good and close and warm our relationships might be.
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