Never alone, often lonely

Working solo, drifting away from the friendships that offer sanity and connection

My teenage obsession with The Beatles helped mark me out at school. And not in a good way. Being into a band that, at the time, hadn’t played together for 25 years, wasn’t exactly a marker of coolness. I’ve written before how my history teacher called me an ‘easy target’ after I’d been punched in the face during an A Level lesson. Perhaps my love of the Fab Four was part of the problem.

Retreating into the depths of The White Album, with all its off-kilter mystery and intimations of a world I didn’t understand, provided succour during these frankly awful years. Yet while this and the other late period albums, in particular, have carried on being cornerstones of my life, it’s a line about The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein that I think of almost daily, one I must have read (though I can’t be sure) around that time in the late 1990s. ‘He was never alone, but often lonely.’

Epstein’s loneliness stemmed, according to friends and biographers, from the impossibility of being a gay man in 1950s and 1960s Britain. The horror and harshness of it feels unimaginable, especially to me as a straight white man living 60 years later. That line, though, has spoken to something deep within me for decades now.

It’s nothing new to suggest that people feel lonely in a society that has been atomised and ‘optimised’ by the depredations of modern technology, especially the social internet. We are never alone, but often lonely.

I’ve been thinking of this more lately, though, having spent weeks at home resting my broken leg. The lowest moments in my life have always been when I have felt isolated and lonely. As someone who also enjoys their own company, the lines between enjoying solitude and actively shunning people to the point of misery are blurred to say the least.

When I opted to go freelance in my late 20s, I was delighted to leave the 9 to 5, but soon found myself struggling with the fact I didn’t see anyone all day. It took me five years to pull myself out of that particular hole, when I began swimming in rivers, lakes and the sea and found a community.

What’s struck me recently isn’t necessarily the fact that I am lonely, more that getting out of the hole feels harder now that I’m edging towards my mid 40s. I live in an amazing city with ready access to some of the best countryside in the entire UK. However, my oldest and dearest friends are not here to share it with me. My closest family member is a 75 minute drive away. I’ve come to derive my connection from being outside. From planting seeds, tending to the vegetable patch, playing with my kids and hanging out with my wife in our own private space where birds sing and there’s always a breeze in the trees onto which are home backs.

But there’s something missing. Proper connection with friends. This week I did a quick inventory of my friendships. My closest mate is just an hour away now. Not far, but hardly around the corner. One of my dearest friends, who I met 20 years ago while working on a magazine in London, lives back in his native Melbourne. We text a lot, but haven’t seen each other in two years. It may be many more before we do so again.

Then there are my many friends from university, a time when my loneliness ebbed as I met people who were similar misfits to me. To misquote The Boss, we liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes. This summer is 23 years since I graduated and I still consider these people to be at the heart of my life. In reality, we don’t see each other often (although it’s lovely when we do) and I have little knowledge of their daily lives (or they mine) thanks to my (in my opinion correct) decision to bin off my Instagram account in early 2025.

Making friends at 44 isn’t like it is when you’re a student. My social life extends to Friday evenings at the local cricket club, where we have a drink with fellow parents (could they be friends? I’d like them to be, but I’m not sure how to make the move). I’m bodily tired from gardening work, and mentally tired for many reasons, one of which is still not getting a grasp on my recently diagnosed ADHD. Going out holds little appeal. Solo gigs have never been my thing.

My work, by its nature, requires me to spend time alone. When I’m writing, I spend time in a dedicated office space that I love, with views across the Peak District, with drawings by my kids and postcards of The Beatles on the wall, alongside a pair of guitars I never play. When I’m gardening, I chat with myself, planning what to do next, usually over the sound of the strimmer or the mower. Sometimes I chat with the robins who seem drawn to the tools I leave lying around. I enjoy it when I’m busy. But when things quieten down, that’s when the internal narrative becomes nagging, toxic.

I like to tell myself I don’t work well with people, but for a period in my mid 20s I worked with a group of people who were the most wonderful, kind and generous humans you could ever hope to meet. We still have a whatsapp group, but it’s no substitute for seeing each other all of the time.

I have rented desks at co-working spaces but my allergy to offices makes them hard to stick at. That’s not helped by social anxiety that I tend not to experience, or at least mask better, in other situations. I have found community in my local coffee shop, where I know the owners and often settle in to write.

It’s fair to say that I am rarely alone, but often lonely. I want to drop in on friends, see different faces, without having a 9 to 5 job. I have worked hard to gain professional independence, but what is the cost? Loneliness kills, eventually. Does everyone my age feel like this? Or is it just me?