Why

Since all this was my idea, I am going to volunteer to write first (unless someone is already writing :) ).

What is a better way to start a post than with a book recommendation! I recently used the goodreads app to find good books to read. Obviously, I started with fiction (here tilakmama rolls his eyes...) and came across Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman. Although the plot isn't exceptional, I personally could connect with her in many important ways and hence I finished it in a day.

One of the topic that is book addresses is that of loneliness. The protagonist faces this on a regular basis so much so that she is in complete denial and hence the name. (Not a spoiler!)

Loneliness. I kept thinking about my own struggles with it, and recently I have come across a few of my friends who are going through similar situations. Hence today's topic. 

Before I begin, I must quickly apologise for my rusty English and non-literary way of writing. I am writing a math report in parallel and there I must be precise and methodical, so this post might reflect some of it. Of course I am not claiming that I write better in general, although I think I used to, when I blogged during school.

Anyway, let us start.

 I have been always surrounded by people when I grew up. All the time. Not just physically, that is very true for everyone in India, given the lack of space! Mentally, I was always enveloped in my family's opinions about my everything. If someone did not like some aspect of me, I would simply go to another person who would agree, this was not hard to find as I was the youngest in the household, always pampered to the core. I never had to be alone, I never wanted to, and I never knew if I needed to. Perhaps, I did. So, when for the first time I had to be alone in the hostel room of IISER Mohali, 2013 (I was 21 years old), I completely freaked out. I could absolutely not sleep alone, having slept for 20 years everyday with my mother. I could barely stand being alone in the room with just myself as company. My own company haunted me quite a bit, so I preferred staying alone in my friend's room whole day, surrounded by her possessions. At the end of my two month internship, I had barely managed to sleep alone twice, while being awake till sunrise. 

From there, I have come a long way. I have face different sorts of loneliness which I will try to list below. (lists, there you go!) In 2013, I went on a turbulent journey as I landed in France. It had become extremely eventful, and everyday I would experience a hundred things. It made a whole new person out of me and I am happy that I could survive what I had thought to be the most difficult times of my life (now I laugh at my superlative). One of the major problems I had faced throughout is some form of loneliness. For the others, let me dedicate some other post.

So what are the different forms of loneliness I faced?

• I am alone, so I am lonely: Somehow I ended up believing that if my current situation is forcing me to take care of myself for daily-life stuff (washing clothes, preparing food, washing dishes, groceries), that means that something is wrong with my life, and I have nobody to support me. This is partially due to our upbringing; our parents, grandparents, maid did so much thinking and doing for us, that suddenly everything comes crashing down when you have to live by yourself. Living on my own is inevitable for people like me, we always end up choosing career option which takes us far, far away from home. But it took an exceptional amount of time for me to come to terms with the fact that I am supposed to take care of myself and that it has nothing to do with loneliness. Depending on others for basic survival is a luxury that comes at a great cost. Initially, we do get it for free, and then take it for granted. Then, one fine day, you wake up and realise that unless you make breakfast, you will be hungry and oops you have forgotten to buy food the day before. Nowadays, I am not always alone, Thibaut's being around sometimes makes me dependent but I quickly try to shake it away. 
• My situation is unique: This is the tendency we have to alienate ourselves from our social circle because we think that nobody would understand how we feel. It is true though; no other human's life has followed the exact sequence of events as ours. So yes, nobody would understand us. I felt this quite often in the last four years, because my situation was indeed very different from my peers. I was doing a four year long masters instead of two, I was studying in French medium, I had to do 4 different scientific subjects, two language classes, one social science class and sports, while taking care of my sick boyfriend whom we had to rush to hospital every other day. I am of course not claiming to have helped him a lot, but I tried to be at his disposition as much I could. It was mentally very stressful too, and when you can barely understand the language, everything gets difficult tenfolds. So I would lock myself away from my friends who I thought were leading a normal life (later I found out that the father of one of my friends passed away during the course, the mothers of two had cancer, many were fighting chronic depression, etc). I would barely reveal what I was going through to my well-meaning friends, and as a result I felt lonely. Like I said before, nobody goes through the same set of things, but similar or worse things happen to so many around us that we would never feel lonely in that way if we knew. This way of thinking would often give rise to self-pity in my case and that, in my opinion, is a dead end. 
• People make me lonely: I am unable to to socialise with a large number of people. Talking one-to-one is fine as long as the other person is not a big extrovert. I feel drained in gatherings and parties, it literally feels like someone is sucking out my energy. So I look for pet animals or sit in a corner. After a while, I would realise that everyone is talking to someone and nobody is talking to me...BAM! I am lonely. This happens to me much more in France because the French are very shy so they stick to their groups and would avoid people if conversing with them involved another language. Basically, every gathering would end up in my feeling like a furniture, that too invisible, witnessing others having a nice time. Whenever I go to the university cafeteria for food, I feel this loneliness engulfing me, as I sit in a corner with my tray. Yes, I should ask my friends in my lab to join me, but most of them either don't eat lunch at all or they eat at their homes. One often eats with their advisor or reasearch group mates; my advisor skips lunch too, and there is no other phd student in my group. Hence, my phone keeps me company. Last year, right after I came to Lille, I did not have any office. So for four months, I would go to the lab once a week to meet François, and then stay at home the rest of the days. Thibaut had to go to Paris  or for conferences so I would end up alone for days with no body to talk to. Oh I had almost forgotten about Nantes. There I stayed in 9msq for 8 months, with a shared kitchen. I was surrounded by students from different countries and subjects. Yet, starting a conversation would be so hard! Everyone would simply stick to their own nationality and due to lack of Indians, I ended up friendless. I did try though, I would gather up courage and start a conversation with a random person in the kitchen while cooking, but it would end with his response to me asking what he did. I remember having spent more than two days without using my vocal chord and it was terrible. Thankfully I had to attend classes and there I found some company. So yes, I feel lonely around people too often.
• Need for Validation: Being a person with very low self-esteem is difficult in many ways. Loneliness is one of the consequences. I always needed someone to validate my choices and decisions. When you study abroad, and you are not social, finding validation becomes difficult. With nobody backing me up for what I chose to do or not to do, I would often feel helpless and lonely. Sometimes, I would call up my mother and she would encourage me a lot. But as things became more and more complicated, it was impossible to always explain to her what was going on. And of course she had her own life to deal with. 
• Free time: This sort of falls in the first type but I am talking about it separately because it  has caused me a lot of problems. Till recently, I would find it very hard to survive free time alone. I always needed somebody with me or otherwise I would feel morose. I think this is partially because I am an over-thinker and I always end up upsetting myself my remembering and thinking about too many sad possibilities. I needed someone to bring me out of that black smoke that engulfs me every time I spend too much time alone. I end up wishing someone was there to save me from myself. 

Now that I have broadly classified the circumstances that resulted in my loneliness, I would move on to some solutions that I have found over the years to my problems. I will write about them in my next post. 

Till then, enjoy every moment and here is a glimpse of nature during Lille summer...

(FYI: Huge fat rats were running around beneath the bushes 😅 )