Loneliness

Yesterday SY called me from the UK, where he has been for the past 4 or 5 years. We've known each other for a solid 18 years and have a long history of terrible inside jokes. We've made a pact that he is to make a minimum of one phone call to me a year (ie. The Annual Phone Call). In spite of us having not seen each other for a good three years, like all good friends, we simply pick up where we left off.

SY: Jan, I'm working at a cement plant now.

Jan: Semen plant? (you should listen to our atrocious excrement-related jokes)

SY: And wait, before you say anything, I need to tell you something - I'm calling using the office phone.

Jan: WTF

SY: And, and, wait for this too - it's my account manager's line.

All jokes aside, SY was lonely. He'd recently moved cities for work and with UK's lousy economic state, had many friends move to greener pastures.

Loneliness is so common, yet so rarely discussed. The stigma attached to loneliness is ridiculous. I have been the one half of high school's golden couple, college student council vice president etc. Yet there are days I feel as if I would never be missed, that my mere existence is of such little consequence. During my auditing days, I would have clients quietly enter my room, sit down and tell me all their woes (including the General Manager of a listed company telling me she was "not fit to run the place"). Loneliness is normal, and moreso common for many of us who choose to uproot. I was forced to learn to spend time on my own, to like my own company. Loneliness drove me to compromise standards, of myself and of the people I chose to associate with.

The fact of the matter is, you are forced to make a choice. From the 2 years I've spent here, I've noticed two types of people - the ones who make this home and the ones who don't. Making it home actually requires you to go out, make friends, learn the lingo if you don't know it already (in my case, bastardised English), explore the country, develop your own traditions, but above all, love yourself because chances are, no one else is there to do so.

The trade off? Old friends will fall away. Facebook is extremely helpful for keeping in touch, but the fact of the matter is, only a small handful of people will genuinely love you enough to maintain the friendship. And you with your new life too, will only have the energy for few. The rest will slowly fall away over time.

There are people I know, who have been here for years and years and yet remain their tourist status. Holidays are spent back in their countries of origin. They only mingle with their own communities. They speak in their mother tongues. And do everything exactly the way it used to be done. I suppose that is the easiest way to fit in, but it never fails to befuddle me. After all, why would one go through the entire (very troublesome) process of immigrating, only to do the same thing (let's leave refugees out of the debate)?

But I digress. The point is, there are things you can do to avoid feeling like a leper, but that's really only fighting the symptoms. People come and go. The only constants are you, God and your Mum family. The most important thing to do is to love yourself, to be the best version of yourself because if you don't like you, there is no reason why anyone else should. And then the rest will follow through.

Some ideas on getting out of that lonely rut (thanks to C for this)