Feeling lonely

Are you really an introvert or are you afraid of seeming needy?

The swing’s chains creaked with every push. “Higher, Mama! Higher,” my four-year-old goaded.

I was proud of myself for not being on my phone. I was totally present with him. I am such a good mom. 

But being totally present with him also meant being totally present with myself, and I wasn’t ready for the feelings that hitchhiked alongside my joy.

His little cackles at each apex lit up every cell in my body and I wanted to stay plugged in, but each time he swung away from me, my attention waned. 

The playground was quiet, other than a handful of people. Two tweens, with long, grasshopper-like legs hung off the top of the tornado-shaped slide. A caregiver bottle-fed a baby on a quilted blanket, kissing his rounded cheeks as lovingly as though she birthed him with her own body.

What was I looking for? Who was I looking for? I felt like I had forgotten something. 

A group of parents with children, slightly younger than my son, approached the playground gates. The kids ran ahead as soon as they were “free” in our collective cage. I scanned the parents for some recognition but didn’t know anyone. I felt disappointed. The three children ran around together in a line, like a train, swerving in and out of play structures, laughing at seemingly nothing. I asked my son if he knew any of them and he didn’t answer, hopping off the swing and running to the opposite end of the park. He started climbing upward through a vertical manhole of tires, “C’mon, Mama!”.

The parents were all standing closely together, smiling. They seemed incredibly comfortable. Happy. Were they family? What was their connection? Do I know them? Why don’t I know them? I ran after my son to the big kid’s side and watched him practice his homemade parkour moves. I felt uneasy. 

I kept longing for the parents to look in my direction, to come to our end of the park. This was completely out of character for me. I’m usually hiding on a bench with mirrored sunglasses or focused on my own family. I’m usually looking outward. What do you want?

What is this feeling? 

I was feeling…lonely. 

Image by Roland Mey from Pixabay

Loneliness seems ironic for any mother. I am constantly surrounded by people and doing just fine, thank you very much (*left eye twitching). I clung to the title of “introvert” like a badge of honor. I don’t need other people. Alone time was my favorite time of day. I craved quiet and solitude. How could I be lonely?

Yet there it was. An ache I’m not sure I had felt since middle school. Or more accurately, an ache I had not let myself feel since then. An ache I learned to cover up and tamp down with distractions and hardness and drugs and eating obsessions and boys and work and now family. Lonely was scary. Lonely was bad. If I felt lonely then I was needy, and if I was needy, then I was weak, which meant vulnerable, which meant I could get hurt.

I’m lonely.

What is wrong with you? How do you feel lonely? It was the end of winter “break” (a cruel name for anyone with young kids). I had been constantly surrounded by family, constantly on the go, constantly needed by others, four-legged friends included. I wanted to be holed up in my room, meditating and binge-watching television. Right? Isn’t that what I needed??? To isolate and disconnect in order to recharge? 

I’m not so sure anymore. The recent healing work I’ve been doing has been slowly peeling the layers of emotion-proofing that I have cocooned myself in. Every child, every year as a mother, cracks open my facade of hardness to reveal gooey, needy, love. It’s horribly uncomfortable to be an amorphic glob of emotions and needs. I much prefer being cement poured into a determined framework, strong and contained. Hard.

But no, not on this crisp January day. Not at this beautiful playground that is surrounded by water on three sides. Not with my stalwart four-year-old who is content with me and only me as his companion. On this day, my heart spilled open in all directions in search of connection. In search of community, of another parent, of another mom.

When Jonah was a baby and experienced separation anxiety for the first time I pronounced to the world that we needed to reframe “needy” to “needing.” Needy sounds like a ceaseless hole. The gerund of needing, means it is active, and therefore temporary.

I kindly reminded myself that I was not needy, but simply needing and just as I would be kind to my kids if they were feeling this way, I stopped trying to figure out why I was feeling what I was feeling, and I simply felt my feelings. 

I felt lonely.

Tears welled at the corner of my eyes and my stomach lurched. It was painful, but it subsided. After the wave of loneliness returned to the sea of my emotions, I pulled out my phone and fired off a text to one of my mom groups. “I need a mom’s night ASAP!,” I sent out the flare. Within seconds, we had a date set. I put my phone back in the stroller and went to chase my son.