Everyone feels lonely, weather it be situational, losing a partner, prehaps no close family, new town, maybe your thoughts or beliefs are different making you feel different. So, what about when you have a partner, you have family, children and yet you still feel lonely? As I continue to understand my feelings and self-heal, I hear things that really resonates with me, this one about being lonely really hit come “one of the key-maybe the key- to happiness is the strong connections to other people. The lack of these bonds, even temporarily, is a major happiness stumbling block. “
Being a middle child loneliness is something I felt early on in life. For me it’s always been the “I’m different loneliness”. Things i believed in that others don’t, or sometimes weren’t even willing to have an understanding , it’s the important things to me that can make me feel isolated. When you have friends or family that believe in only their opinions it can make you doubt whether they are being truly well-intended, kind or even willing to be understanding towards you. You have family and friends that you just don’t quite trust. That lack of trust will branch out to everything else. It will make you doubt yourself.
My loneliness stems way back to being a little girl. My entire life being a middle child had actually made me feel very isolated. Always trying to catch up, trying to find my place. It was easy for my sisters; one was the oldest and the other the baby, they had clear definition. It made me often left feeling isolated or feeling rejected. I found this article that had some really good points….actually it made me cry… hard..… “I can’t make my family walk beside me, so, to be with them, I surrender to walking behind them. It’s the same love either way. The choice for isolation would be not walking with my family at all, and I want more than that. While I still feel separate, I’m not isolated.” … I cried because I could see myself as a little girl and as a grow woman doing this very thing… just wanting to be close so I would take the feeling of being separate walking behind rather than isolating myself all together, for at least I would have something, feel something.
As an adult I am trying to learn acceptance. Being the bigger person… ugh.. this is hard, it feels like surrendering. But I’m learning it is not surrendering its more like going with the flow of it for self preservation. I will not surrender because that would in some way make it a victory for them. But this isn’t a game, it’s not about that, it’s about accepting one another for just who they are, it’s to not put judgement onto anyone. Surrendering would be taking all meaning of your feelings away. So, I say to thee:
“I accept you; hurtful person for who you are. All your flaws and hurtfulness. I will take whatever poor connection we have instead of using my energy to build a wall for you I will use my energy once spent to hide you to create positive things. In hopes that one day you will accept the person I am. I will not judge you as I hope you will not judge me.”
Practicing acceptance is loving of the toughest kind. I am working on stopping the attempt to force my family to connect in the way I want and rather just accept what connection, big or small there is. The energy I have spent or spend trying to get what I need it taking away from where that energy can be well used.