Loneliness is the Gap Between Me and Myself

It is the herald announcing a call for change

Alone but not lonely. (Credit: Author)

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“What an incredible journey,” the BBC radio host said, “and last question — we’ve been talking about loneliness on the show this morning, and you’re doing this walk alone — do you get lonely?”

The question caught me off-guard.

It was my first time speaking on the radio about my year-long walk around the coast of Great Britain for a mental health charity. I was nervous and hadn’t anticipated the question.

It was the first of many times the question would be asked of me during my circumnavigation. I knew what it meant to feel lonely, but it wasn’t caused by physical aloneness. For the most part, the last three months of walking alone gave me a deep sense of belonging.

On the radio, I fumbled my answer, saying there had been times of loneliness, but my aloneness was mostly solitude. This unremarkable answer left me unsatisfied.

Because I had spent many years feeling lonely before I set out to walk the coast, and that feeling often came from being in the company of others rather than my own.

What caused that feeling was an inability to express who I was.