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Have you ever been lonely?" - a popular song since the 1930s.... have you ever been blue?
For most people, the answer must have been a yes... one time or another...
Very often the kind of loneliness is caused mostly by temporal or situational failures in human interaction (like broken relationships, relocation, angers or dissappointments, betrayals etc) and other environmental factors. There are many people out there suffering long-term loneliness as a result of low self-esteem, unwantedness and vulnerability (old age?). Sometimes this can lead to clinical depression and even suicide.
Often these are curable and reversible..
"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty" - Mother Teresa
Have you come across loneliness which is an inescapable part of a person's entire life, like the case of some low to medium-degree autistics?
Birger Sellin (a German born 1973) is an autistic (non high-degree type) since 2 years old. He, just like most autistics, was boxed-in or trapped in his own cold and dark lonely world, not being able to express or communicate his feelings to the outside "normal", but to them, a "confused" world.
For 17 years, he lived in his own world but could only watch (in silence) what was going on around him and within himself. He just could not do things, normal living required of a person. People around him talk things which are hurting and he suffered constant humiliation of being ignored or misunderstood. His own lapses of weird social behaviours, screaming attacks, fits and his stereotypical actions (weird repetitive actions) often embarrassed himself that made him withdraw himself more and more from the real world.
In 1990, Birger was introduced with the "Facilitated Communication" developed by an Australian, Rosemary Crossley. He started, painfully slowly, to type out his inner feelings onto a computer... and has since published a book entitled "I Don't Want To Be Inside Me Anymore".
In another book (first published in 1995); "In Dark Hours I Find My Way - messages from an autistic mind", his first writings reflected and revolved around his inner loneliness. He described this as "being isolated", "buried alive", "I am drowning in loneliness", " a lonely person is always replacing important experience of poor humanity on this earth by constantly talking nonsense in his lonely mind".
Some of the insights into his dark lonely world are in his own words....
"i could never write so much in the daytime perhaps thats because a lonely person likes night better than day
a lonely person orients himself by light and darkness
he doesnt go by any clock the clock of the lonely is a visible socalled system of lightdarkness"
"whatever happens i want to learn to write properly because
it is the way to independence
first i was very scared then it was a lot of fun
relly i would rather say something important if thats
okay there are things a person like
birger thinks in the loneliness because this world ought to know them
its like being buried alive the loneliness of an autistic is like a great clod of
earth weighing down the soul"
"rustling (running marbles through my fingers) is stereotypical behaviour which is really
intoxicating i am only doing visibly what loneliness does invisibly"
"one anxiety i suffer from most of all is how to survive a day
from the settled viewpoints of a chosen person that must surely seem ridiculous
i for my part protect against icy times of day
by setting up a socalled iron important list of questions
an idiot system as it were running away from anxiety
and yet again i am just irritating everyone including myself
the stupid thing is that understanding it is no help"
"total madness is easier than living boxed up in the mistaken isolation already mentioned i cant
find outhow come i have to live walled in like this
i can think clearly inside my head
and i can feel too
but when i want to put the socalled simplest actions into
breathtaking practice in these surroundings outside the crate i cant do it
restlessness comes over me anxiety and idiotic panic bring me almost to despair"
On his mother, he wrote, "a chosen person like an autistics mother will get her reward some day"
On his dying grandfather, he wrote," yes i want to tell an iron story it is about an iron old man
wise but not very rich he wanted to make nonsense visible by
really making serious invisible words visible and making obvious nonsense invisible
a real grandpa never dies
he goes on living in my heart like before and i will never forget him
he was an important wise person to me
he is calm and relaxed and he worked out the words just the way they ought to be
i love him very much" (13 August, 1991)
My question to you is in this song:
"So how can you tell me you're lonely
And say for you the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the
Streets of LondonI 'll show you something to make you change your mind.."
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