When I was exploring in t2 world about what to write, I saw this prompt and decided to venture into it. I'll start by defining loneliness. According to the RAE:
f. Voluntary or involuntary lack of company. Synonyms include isolation, retreat, abandonment, incomunication, separation, neglect, confinement, closure, banishment.
f. Deserted place, or uninhabited land.
f. Sadness and melancholy felt due to the absence, death, or loss of someone or something. Synonyms include melancholy, sadness, nostalgia, longing, melancholia.
Reading the definitions, I couldn't help but feel melancholic, remembering all the times I've felt completely alone, even when surrounded by people. And I'll start with the story of my first pregnancy. My first child's arrival would be in the midst of the Covid pandemic. I remember feeling panic about getting infected, and I couldn't understand where that feeling came from when I was very fearless. Later, I realized it was because of hormones, and my imbalanced brain made me experience new emotions. My partner was a good companion; I remember he cared a lot about the pregnancy, even more than me. However, the feeling of loneliness was weighing on me. This leads me to the second definition proposed by the RAE, "Deserted place." Because even though I was living, everything felt foreign to me. Happiness was temporary, and every day I struggled to feel okay, but I couldn't. As the pregnancy progressed, I was in total isolation, with the most outgoing thing I did being participating in my online classes.
My family visited me a couple of times, many of my childhood friends didn't even message me. Then I began to feel a transformation in my soul; I felt it was fading, and I cried alone. I was angry and couldn't control myself or focus on my daily routine. Reflecting on it, I can remember how lonely I felt. The times when having my baby inside me wasn't enough to make me feel accompanied. Now I understand that this was due to my new stage that I didn't fully understand or accept, going from being an autonomous girl to being responsible for another life. If you ask me the origin, it's because as a child, I dreamed that when starting my family, I would be surrounded by my tribe, the people who were very close to me would be involved in the process, asking how I am, how I feel, how the baby is, but obviously, it wasn't like that. And I will tell you that it is indispensable because there are many things you have no idea if they are normal or not in pregnancy. I felt lost; I read a lot about how to be a good mom and how to successfully face pregnancy and childbirth preparation. None of that worked because I would break down at any moment. I would look around, see my house, and there was no one, not even feeling confident enough to communicate with someone to say that I wasn't doing well. I just stayed lying on the bed, curling up and crying. I remember hugging my belly and apologizing to my baby for feeling lonely when he was with me. Loneliness is tough, and it was consuming me. My emotional stability was at its lowest; my mind and body were languishing. It was like cancer, where I had good moments, I remember laughing, I remember my partner bringing me gifts, cooking for me, pampering me, and me, not responding to the improvement but sinking into the horrible disease.
You may wonder how dramatic I have been, and perhaps even cowardly for not learning to face the negative emotion, but those who have experienced loneliness as a disease may understand me. But now I understand what happened and what happens when loneliness returns to my home. Initially, my family wasn't entirely happy with the news, so seeing their faces and hearing all the bad things about my future buried a malignant thorn that kept growing. Then, as you know, there are changes in your body, physiological, hormonal, mental. I remember forgetting everything, and people getting upset because they thought I didn't care about their affairs or agreements. I had so much on my mind that I couldn't organize myself or concentrate, and everything they said I wouldn't achieve because of having a baby started to have an adverse effect; I started to believe it, and how bad that was! Because I went from loneliness to a state of denial of the present that completely banished me from myself. Before that, I believed myself to be a person, lively, happy, and resilient.
As my due date approached, loneliness suppressed my chest, and I didn't say it. I was afraid my son would feel my loneliness, and I didn't know how to abandon it. Loneliness became such a companion to me; it absorbed me, left me defenseless that I won't lie to you, I don't remember the last months before my childbirth, it was like being an inanimate object. However, everything changed when Al was born, and I heard his cry, life returned to me. I felt so empathetic with his cry; he came into life crying, and it was through my embrace that he calmed down. There I banished sadness from myself to become the guardian of my son. I remember that moment as a rebirth; my brain clicked, I freed myself. Reading more scientific articles, I found that it's true that a mother's brain changes radically during pregnancy and at the moment the baby is born because you are born with him.
I don't deny that I still feel loneliness with me, I cry, breathe, greet it, and ask it not to stay for too long because now I am a refuge for two little ones. Now I can tell you that it's normal to feel it for a while, but not as much as I experienced it. Finally, I accepted that I needed external help because I wasn't managing it alone. So, I started therapy, began to go out for walks, give myself alone time (which is ironic), listen to my body when something is wrong, and I no longer keep it to myself. I start to analyze it, study the cause, and don't let it become what didn't let me breathe or live months ago.
Thanks to whoever proposed this niche of writing because it's the first time I've made my most fatal emotions public, and also a huge thank you to the founders of T2 for giving us the wings and the pencil to create things we didn't think we could achieve.
