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Sage Justice sitting alone in a white linen dress on a red bench holding her straw hat in Bristol, England facing the River Avon.

This post was inspired by Lynn J. Broderick and Cass who co-wrote the piece Lonliness Doesn’t Always Look Lonely. Two women explore what it means to feel alone when you’re not actually alone.

That got me thinking about the reverse: what it feels like to not feel alone when you kind of actually are.

I’m with Robin Williams in a famous quote attributed to him about loneliness: “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.”

Of course, people can’t make us feel any sort of way. We have to take responsibility for our own feelings, but people can misjudge us, or choose contempt for us in lieu of curiosity and care; and that can make us feel alone.

Loneliness affects each of us differently.

I’ve never felt more alone than when I’m trying to belong.

I feel most alone in a crowd of people.

I feel least alone when I’m in nature on my own …

or traveling and know no one and there’s a language barrier,

because then I can connect with people on a level of oneness that all the superficial differences can get in the way of.

There’s no language barrier in a soft smile, in a helpful offering, in a kind gesture of human connection.

Those moments bring me joy. So too, my time alone. I’m about to go for a two hour walk alone and I know it will be one of the best parts of my day.

I’ve been a lone wolf since I was child.

Even as a youth I was drawn to Emerson and Thoreau

and a life alone in the woods like Walden.

My daughter is much the same and she is my near constant companion (although she too cherishes her time alone). We’re actually on a journey to find her own version of Walden, a forever homestead for her and the family she plans to have in the future.

My husband is neither as solitary nor as social as we are and we connect several times a day although we’ve lived in two separate countries since February.

My best friend of 30+ years is similar and we share voice memos daily.

My sister girlfriends all live in my phone and are only a text or phone call away.

But I am always with me

and what others might perceive

as my lonely bones looking for the connective tissue to hold it altogether.

What’s the cure? Connection.

What prevents connection? Misjudging.

Loneliness is the flip side of the coin of judgment. I’m not philosophically certain you can have one without the other. In contrast, when we eliminate one, perhaps we eliminate the other.

“We can only attach ourselves to something that is separate from us and on the most penetrating level, nothing is separate from us, for we are one.” – LOSS

The more comfortable we are in solitude,

the less alone we feel in the company of others.

There’s a peaceful sense of wholeness

I feel in the stillness alone.

The only thing that is making me feel alone and afraid in this moment of now is managing physical pain from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and trying to figure out how to make ends meet after having spent my life as a caregiver, writer, and performing artist doing what mostly amounted to unpaid labor.

If you haven’t read, Have You Earned Your Right to Live? Caring for the Caregiver, please do.

Sage Justice is an award-winning poet, author, critically acclaimed performing artist, and intensely sincere, bold humanitarian activist.