Tag: Loneliness

From Another Street

Posted on by andrew

Julia Magsombol (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

Please note that this article discusses suicide and suicidal ideation.

 

I was 10 when I first became afraid of the conversation around death. I had known all along what it meant when someone you loved died, but not the idea of losing them. It was a sunny afternoon in Manila, and the only thing that made the weather somewhat balanced was the breezy air that plunged into our sweat. I was on the patio with my grandmother and our house cleaner.

 

The town where I came from was small, so gossip was like dust, it was everywhere. Gossip and conversations could be heard from here to there. It didn’t matter where you were. You’d just hear things. 

 

“Oh Cely, you wouldn’t believe what I just heard!” our house cleaner muttered. 

 

“What is it, Muray?” 

 

“A man killed himself in his house just last week!” 

 

“Jesus Christ! Where is he from?” 

 

“I don’t know, but he’s from another street!” 

 

“Tsk, tsk!” 

 

“His fiancé left him for another man. I guess he couldn’t take it anymore!” 

 

“What a poor man. God bless him.” 

 

“He hanged himself just under the loft bed! I guess he wanted to die fast.” 

 

“That is brutal! Did anyone come to check up on him?” 

 

“No one. His body was decaying when people recovered it. His family is not in Manila, and he was all alone for years — well, aside from his ex-fiancé.” 

 

“Poor man. What a lonely death. No wonder he killed himself.” 

 

The conversation goes on and on. It terrifies me to hear such a thing. 

 

I never understood what the guy was feeling, but for a second, I thought he could’ve just gone far away and travelled to different countries to feel better about the break-up. As I got older, I realized that even if he had escaped the place he was in, he’d still have been miserable. At that moment, he had lost the love of his life, and perhaps himself — and how could he move on from that situation? He’d be dead either way. 

 

But his ending might have been a little different if he had someone besides his fiancé. If someone would have been there during his darkest times, he might not have killed himself. I can’t really know what ending he would’ve had. Well, truthfully, we all die at the end, that’s all of our endings.

 

But I know things could’ve been better if someone had knocked on his door and asked how he was — if someone had eaten with him and talked to him. 

 

It could’ve been better if he had the chance to realize that he wanted to live longer, maybe for himself. It could’ve been better if he’d had someone. At least, there would have been a greater chance that he would live longer and die peacefully. 

 

What’s tiresome in this world is how we build walls within ourselves instead of a bridge when we are drowning in our darkest times. We build walls around ourselves and we don’t let anyone enter. And others don’t want to reach out because of the walls that they have built as well. We end up being alone and hurting during our difficult moments. 

 

And so I’ve finally grasped it: we don’t need a lot of things to hold on to during our difficulties. We just need someone. 

 

I never knew the name of the man, nor what he looked like. I don’t even remember what street he was living on or what address he had. All I remember is that he was a man from another street who killed himself. 

 

The next morning, everybody went on with their everyday lives. Gossip kept flowing. It seemed like the guy from another street never even existed. 

 

—

 

Julia Magsombol is currently a journalism student from Edmonton, Canada, who desires to bring hope to people through her writing. When not writing or reading, you can catch her sewing clothes, painting nature and drinking instant coffee.

From Manila to Alberta

Posted on by andrew

Julia Magsombol (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

I was reading some news about immigration, and it stunned me how there are so many people from different countries wanting to live here in Alberta, Canada. Canada opened its doors to over 400,00 new permanent residents in 2021. I wonder why so many people wanted to live here. Did they have the same reason as my family? 

 

Almost eight years ago, my family and I packed our things and left the Philippines to move to Alberta. I was never part of the decision to move here. It was a huge decision that both my parents made for me and my siblings. 

 

My aunt sponsored my family. I never really cared about immigration applications, but I knew that it took many years and effort for us to validly live here. I tend to question my parents and even our fellow immigrants in choosing this path. Why this? 

 

When my family and I were starting out in Canada, it was a difficult time for all of us. My parents’ life completely changed in Alberta. They were both homesick, but for the sake of our future, they persevered and stayed here. They had the strength to stay in this strange country for us, their kids. 

 

My life completely changed when I moved into our new home as well. I remember one incident that I will never forget. After two months in Canada, I started going to school. Everything was new to me, including the system, the people and the culture. I was like a lost kid who was trying to find her mom, but couldn’t. What was more annoying was that I couldn’t talk about this loneliness to my parents because we were all adjusting to this new place. 

 

At school, there were times when I would sit in front of the lockers or inside the washroom all by myself and stay there for a very long time just to kill time before classes started. I would get lost on my way home too, because I would take the wrong bus. I had no one to talk with about all those things, and I wish I did during those times. 

 

I believe that there are two types of loneliness: the kind that we choose, and the kind that we don’t.

 

During those times, it wasn’t my choice to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone, especially when I needed to talk to somebody.

 

But not long ago, I found friends. In all honesty, they were people I wouldn’t think I could be friends with, but I felt comfort and relief. That was enough, and I felt happy. 

 

When I moved to Alberta, I wanted to be someone else, someone better. As my friendships developed, I found myself changing in the most bizarre ways. They weren’t changes that I wanted to because of my own will; they were changes that I needed because of other people, and perhaps their acceptance. Those changes were not good. I felt far from not only my home or my family, but also from myself. 

 

As I spent more time with my friends, I changed the way I dressed and spoke. I changed my attitude and the things I liked. I spent less time with my family. 

 

My mother started to get frustrated with the new me and how I spent more time with other people. I felt guilty then, because I knew that she was also trying to adjust to everything, yet I was ignoring her. Still, I didn’t listen to her,  only to myself.  

 

My mother’s frustrations grew bigger, and we would fight constantly. I have always guessed that she never understood me and how I felt lonely all the time. I said words that I should not have in those fights, because I knew how hurtful they were to my mother. I hurt her a lot. 

 

One day, when I came home late in the winter, I found my mother crying in the living room. The lights were off, and it was very dark. I went to her and asked her what had happened. She wouldn’t say. 

 

I wondered if my dad was fired from his job, or my siblings were bullied at their school, or maybe she was frustrated because she couldn’t find a job. I couldn’t guess. 

 

Then my mother suddenly reached for me and hugged me. It had been a long time since she hugged me, and it felt odd how her hands were so rough. Her tears fell onto my face, and I wanted to pull away from her. But she hugged me so tightly that I couldn’t move. 

 

Still crying, my mother told me that her grandma had just died. She said that she couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t go home because we’d only been in Alberta for two months. It wouldn’t be ideal to go back to our home country and spend a lot more money when our new lives were still not settled. 

 

I wanted to cry in that moment, but I knew I had been so selfish. I only listened to myself and my feelings, but not my mother or the rest of my family. My feelings were valid, but I should have at least cared for my family too. I knew they felt lonely like me. 

 

I couldn’t do anything, but I reached for my mother and hugged her too. I felt some comfort, and maybe a hug was all we needed. 

 

From that winter onwards, everything indeed changed. I changed, and so did my perspective. My parents changed. My siblings changed. Our lives changed. But I know one thing: our relationship with each other never changed. Though we all felt somewhat estranged, we were still warm. 

 

—

 

Julia Magsombol is currently a journalism student from Edmonton, Canada, who desires to bring hope to people through her writing. When not writing or reading, you can catch her sewing clothes, painting nature and drinking instant coffee.

Wounded Child

Posted on by andrew

Ling-Yee Sze, Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

I personally think that I am quite experienced in feeling lonely. The feeling of loneliness was most pervasive in my teenage or adolescent years.

 

I have always enjoyed alone time. A lot of activities that I enjoy – drawing, reading, playing music, etc . . . are usually conducted independently.

 

When I was a kid, I lived with my grandparents in a small village in a southern province in China. They were quite permissive and busy with physical work. I had great fun playing by myself alone. I did not feel lonely at all; my parents’ love for me was always in the back of my mind. One of my most vivid memories from those years was sitting in the middle of a motorbike, between my grandpa at the front and my grandma at the back.

 

Then many incidents that I would now define as traumas happened after I went to Hong Kong at the age of five that created some negative emotional imprints on me. As a sensitive child, I developed a lot of negative beliefs and coping mechanisms in interacting with people, which resulted in me feeling lonely in or after social interactions.

 

A big wound I have is in my social ability. When I first met my mum at five years old, she perceived me as self-centred and lacking discipline. I do not remember what I did, but one night she beat me and dragged me to the garbage room. That is by far the biggest trauma I have around being rejected and unlovable.

 

Later, my belief of not being social enough or unlovable was reinforced when some teachers indicated that I should spend less time being an observer in group activities. On Parent’s Day, my teacher asked if I was an only child because I didn’t participate in as many peer groups as she thought I should.

 

I carried this wound of feeling socially inadequate into interacting with others. In order to manipulate people into liking me more and appear to be more engaged in groups, I tried very hard to people-please and read others’ minds, and did not dare to push any boundaries. I used this mode to interact with my peers and teachers in my primary school years, then every day after returning home I felt alive and able to be myself again, and not wear the mask of a temperless good girl. I enjoyed a very intimate, sharing, vulnerable relationship with my grandma.

 

The real challenge for me came after my grandma passed away when I was 14. Suddenly my world collapsed, and I felt the intense belief that no one really respected, accepted, loved and made me feel significant other than my grandma. Coupled with some other wounds, such as believing that I was weird, unorganized and timid, or that only outgoing girls were deserving of love, or that my sexual desires made me unlovable, my adolescent years following her death were very rough emotionally.

 

I sought validation and love in indirect ways – I tried to be perfect in every drawing I made so that my peers and teachers would praise me, I tried watching 10 hours of Korean TV series nonstop to immerse myself in the world of the main female characters and feel undivided and loyal love from the main

male characters. These ways to meet my needs for love and connection helped me to forget about the pain for some time, but they were not helping me at the root level.

 

It has only been in recent years, when I stepped into personal development and self-healing, that I began to see my loneliness in different and much more empowering ways. Love and connection is vital to every single person at every stage of life. A lot of my false beliefs about my lovableness stems from the emotional imprints created when I was small. They carried into my adulthood because my brain at the time of these traumatic events perceived interaction and being vulnerable as unsafe, as leading to rejection and shame. In order to better be prepared and protect myself from danger and future interactions, I developed coping or soothing strategies to meet my needs for connection while keeping myself safe.

 

However, when I believed people around me were dangerous and interactions were unsafe, I was not present in my interactions at all. I hid the majority of myself – my traits, my needs and my emotions. The longer the interactions were, the more exhausted and drained and lonely I would feel after. I would then go back home and numb myself by watching television or listening to songs – only when I was all alone would I feel safe to fully be myself.  In those moments I felt so lonely and hopeless and trapped and empty.

 

Now I am working to reconnect with myself – my emotions, my needs and my boundaries – to see who I really am when there is no fear of being judged or shamed, shifting from critical self-talk to a more compassionate tone and replacing self-shaming with self-acceptance. When I fully accept and see and hear and respond to myself, I feel less lonely and I feel able to communicate to other people what I am about and what I need. Even if sometimes these interactions are not satisfying, I’ve started to trust that I can set boundaries and give love and connection to myself, especially my wounded child.

 

—

 

Hi, my name is Ling-Yee Sze and I am a personal development enthusiast who began a self-help journey four years ago. Along the way, I have met many inspiring people. I hope to share my personal stories and collected learnings with you!