It’s your typical Friday night. The long week of classes and assignments has finally come to an end. I guess you could start on that economics project due in a week — but that’s not really what Friday nights are for, right?
You decide to message a friend and ask them if they’d like to go for dinner. They’ve got plans.
You go back home, ready to put on a movie, order some take-out and have a chill evening to yourself. But that lurking desire to be around other people haunts you and has you asking yourself: why do I feel so alone?
I’ve been there. In fact, I’ve been wrestling with these thoughts during the entirety of the weekend that I was writing this article.
Studies show that in the United States, about 46% of the population feels lonely. The universal feeling can actually be explained using evolutionary theory and dates back to ancestral times. Millions of years ago, our survival was dependent on our accessibility to food, water, shelter and heat. Yet our access to these vital resources was dependent on one very crucial factor: a group of people.
Contrary to what you may have believed, the biggest threat to humans was not a big, scary, meat-eating predator — it was being alone.
Over time, as natural selection evolved and rewarded ancestors who collaborated with each other, our brains grew to turn social interactions into biological necessities.
I go through waves when it comes to loneliness. There are moments when I feel incredibly content with my own company and I cherish being able to engage in my daily routine, without having to accommodate anyone else. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that I only like these moments when I get to choose them. By this, I mean, I don’t like being alone when it isn’t of my own accord. I don’t mind choosing to have space from the people around me, but I detest it when the space chooses itself.
As an international student, my family and friends are thousands of miles away. Time zones make it impossible for us to communicate for about 60% of my day, and the 40% overlap is usually filled with classes and meetings.
Even then, I’m not completely alone. My phone may not be flooded with hundreds of unread messages, but I would say I have a solid group of nice people at college that I can call my friends. Plus, this didn’t exactly start when I moved away. I’ve been experiencing what I used to refer to as “chronic loneliness” from way before I left for college.
This form of loneliness was rooted in emotional isolation from others, not necessarily a physical one. For me, I need to have developed very deep relationships with those around me in order to treat this feeling of exclusion. However, in some environments, like national lockdowns or starting new at a big college, developing meaningful relationships was inherently difficult.