The loneliness of the long-distance father

What has struck me over the past four or five days, since the girls' advent, is the loneliness of a person's life. Normally this loneliness is not so palpable. We have our routines that cover it up, and we have a general sense of the lack-of-significance of daily life, which numbs it. We have access to our small and large addictions, which also numb the loneliness quite effectively. Working, watching television, facebooking, chatting on the phone, cursing rush-hour traffic, shopping for essentials and impulse buying all are good curbs against loneliness.

But when life jumps a level, and everything is fraught with significance, and every day is full of important news, then loneliness can be felt because the power of our small addictions and our daily routines is broken up.

No one can feel what you are going through. I watch my wife, and I know that know one can really know what she has gone through the past month, the past week. Perhaps talking about it helps, but when life is too busy to allow for the calm connecting conversation, and when the demands of life are too intense to allow for the pleasant happy eye-contacts, and when there is more going on than a person can stand and no one can let down their burden without crying and there is no time for crying and no one to cry with, then the partnership of marriage is temporarily denied to us as well and we are alone. In it together, and in it alone.

So I have struggled the last several days with this loneliness. At times, not all the time, but at times and intensely. To keep hearing echo in my head the phrase, No one gives a shit about you and no one cares about what you have to deal with, to keep hearing it and tolerating this is not fun. I hear it and I recognize the feeling and I say, Yes this is a feeling but it is an artifact of my life and not a fact of my existence. It's the way I am feeling and doesn't tell me much about my reality. And I put it on the shelf and try to keep moving.

It does seem true, however, that everyone I see is caught up in their own life, and the intensity of their concerns, self-aware or not, dominate them and control them. I can see them passing close by and recognize the distance between us. What is important to me is not even noticed by them, and what is important for them may not be recognized by me. If I see it, I still can't value it the way they do.

Tolerating loneliness is part of the challenge of family life. To know you are lonely is simple. To appreciate that everyone is lonely is complex. To tolerate our lonelinesses and to keep trying to understand what I do and what everyone else does in the grip of our loneliness is the journey of life.