Over the last couple of years, I have been feeling an increasing sense of loneliness. Not the no one loves me, and I am all alone in the world kind. I am a teacher, I get plenty of human interaction there. I have friends and a family. More just a nagging feeling that I am missing some kind of intimate contact in my life.
I have been trying to address it in a variety of ways. I have done community service, I started going back to the Universalist Church, I helped found a community coop...all of these things were interesting, helpful even, but did not seem to scratch the core itch.
Unfortunately from a health perspective, it also got me turning back to food, the great loneliness inhibitor. Looking back, I wonder if losing weight helped to intensify the feelings; I was no longer using food to dull them. Once I hit more or less goal weight, the competitive drive was quelled, and the feelings were allowed to percolate to the surface once more.
In the last couple of months, I have begun to wonder if the loneliness is more visceral. I had never really stopped to consider how much human contact I had had from my kids when they were younger. Now they are older and beginning their own lives, it just isn't there as much, and nothing has moved in to fill the void.
I have also come to wonder if this kind of contact is vital to my well-being. That it is not being 'needy' or 'clingy', as some might categorize it. I believe I simply experience love in large part through physical contact. Others personality types might experience it in different ways: actions, words, etc. I like and need those as well, but they are not enough.
Does that make any sense? Has anyone else experienced this? What have you done to work through it?