Alone vs. lonely

The last few weeks have been rough. My life has changed in so many ways, I don't even know where to start. Things have been shaken, stirred and turned upside down and nothing is like it used to be anymore.

My marriage is at the verge of being extinct, it looks like I will be an Ex-wife, a divorcee in the near future and with that comes a totally new state of life. Being alone. Technically I won't be alone-alone. I still have my kids, but right now I am not even sure if they will permanently live with me or my (still) husband. I don't feel mentally stable right now to care for them in an appropriate way on a daily basis without being overwhelmed too much and hurting myself (mentally, not physically) or them with my behavior even more than being separated for their father will already do. But their father is also not really stable mentally right now because the fact that I told him I want to end our marriage has shaken him and his world like nothing else before.

Things have not been peachy and happy for a while now. I was very sick and then very depressed and he was totally overwhelmed and helpless with helping me and caring for himself in the process. The last year has been rough and after moving back home to my hometown I had hoped things will get better and it would save the tiny rest of hope and feelings we still had for each other. I know, changing the location will not eliminate the underlying problems but we both hoped that it would stir us in the right direction to find our way back together. Unfortunately nothing helped and the things we hoped for didn't happen.

But back to the topic of being alone versus being lonely. I haven't been alone in the last 15 years, except a few days once in a while when my husband was on business trips or back when we still had a long-distance relationship, or at ties when I was in the hospital. I am not used to it and it feels horrible. And then a friend of mine said, maybe it is not that your are alone, but the fact that you feel lonely. Being alone can be fun, and helpful in the process of finding back to yourself, you can do whatever you want and no one gets hurt or feels neglected. Feeling lonely makes you feel helpless, unhappy and unloved. And it usually stems from the fact that you can not be alone with yourself. Because you are not used to your own company and you don't know what to do with yourself. Right now I hate being alone because my thoughts are way too loud and the voices in my head talk to me in a way I don't like. They tell me I didn't do the right thing, they tell me what a horrible person I am, they question everything I did and said and felt or feel. And there is no one around to talk to and quite them or someone who makes me think about something else. I would rather be "alone" in the company of others where each person can do what they want but you are still there to talk to each other when you feel like it. Being alone in our apartment when no one is there is hard for me.

I have forgotten how to be alone with myself just due to the fact that, forced by the way we lived and being sick for such a long time, I just never had the chance or felt the urge to be it. But in the last months I have overcome being sick, I have overcome feeling helpless and weak and have found my inner strength again. I want to be independent and live my life the way I feel is right. And by that I have realized I need to change my surroundings, I need to break free from the life that reminds me of being weak and sick. I need to be away from the people that remind me of it every day, just by being around, like my husband and unfortunately also my kids. I need to find myself again and in the process it is probably necessary to be alone. I just didn't realize that by telling the people I (still) love that I need to be alone, I hurt them and they won't understand and maybe they do not want to be there anymore when I come back from finding myself.

And I never realized that with being alone, there is also the unbelievably overwhelming feeling of being lonely.

Irene