Talking about loneliness.

I was thinking about this yesterday. I think I spend so much time on the internet because it's a way to feel connected and not so alone. I like being alone, and I have a strong need for privace and require a lot of personal space, that being said, it feels very alone and lonely to be me. I'm sure that everyone feels this to a certain extent. Yesterday, I took my granddaughter to get movies and pizza. It was the first time I had left the house since Saturday afternoon when I went to work. On the way out the door, it occured to me that if I didn't have a "job", I'd spend all of my time holed up in my house.

And I was thinking that if I had a family at home, a husband, children, roomate, lover, friends, etc... that I'd be heading out that door a lot more often. And that being holed up at home would be the LAST thing on my mind. And that I'd only want to be all hunkered in during those times when everyone was at work or at school.

Which made me wonder... and think about who am I? and what do I really want? The whole time I was married with children my deepest wish was for time alone. Then, when I get divorced and the kids are gone, I am now alone, and what did I do? I spent a significant time feeling anguish and angst about being alone. Finally, I get used to it and find ways to mask, ignore, alleviate, channel, and bury the loneliness - what happens? I end up with a boyfriend.

At first the boyfriend thing was ideal because he was working out of town, and gone all week, giving me my alone time, and then every weekend I got my fill of togetherness time. Of course the whole thing got ruined when he started working IN town and was parked in my lap all the time. So much so, that when he got another out of town job he was determined that I should go with him - at which point the whole thing fell apart because I refused to go.

And then it was agony and angst again about being alone. My friendships and my family have been helpful, but I'm still not getting my social needs met, which means that I must be much more social than I think. And this whole idea of me being a "loner" is just the story I tell myself, when in actuality I'm not a loner at all, just someone who needs "alone time" more often than most.

And all this talk about "social needs" reminds me of the Sims game, a past obsession that I have been contemplating reviving. It was playing the Sims game that taught me about needs that I continually neglected, needs such as: comfort, sleep, and yes, social interaction.