On Loneliness

So I’ve been thinking about loneliness lately. I was supposed to go to Kuwait in June, to repeat the trip I went on last year with Aga-Boom. Now, in the end, the trip didn’t happen, which is okay, but it got me thinking. I was excited about the trip because I’d had a ton of fun in China with the gang. But more specifically, I’d had a great time with Zack, hanging out and bullshitting about life and mutual friends and comic books and all that popular culture BS. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t upset about not going to Kuwait for any other reason than I was feeling lonely and it would have been nice to hang out with my friend. 

Now, to be clear, I have some great friends here in Lithuania and really, there’s not much I enjoy more than just hanging out with Rasa and Monki, but I miss having my peer group around to go for a beer with, or play a round of pool or talk movies and comics and science fiction with. That just doesn’t exist for me here for a variety of demographic reasons – age, culture, language, experience… all of that.

And I miss it.

The upshot is that sometimes I feel very alone here. We don’t have anyone to watch Monki so Rasa and I have a hard time getting away, just the two of us. I’m ten hours away from the western side of the US so it gets difficult to chat with friends because what’s morning for them is night for me and vice versa – finding the time, amongst everyone’s busy, adult schedules, is near impossible. And even when we can talk, it seems like we never get past the conversational ramp up, you know, the wheels of the train slipping and sliding until they find purchase and actually start moving the train forward. Conversation is like that, you need to slip and slide before you get to the meat of things.

I’ve got friends who are hurting and I feel useless, not being able to help them, not even being able to just get them out of their lives for a few minutes with a distraction. Any social interaction I have with them, has to be a planned, conscious choice. I can’t just knock on their door and say “hey, let’s go get a burger.”

Don’t get me wrong. I like my life here, and the friends I do have. And I love my family – but sometimes it’s just hard, you know.