Loneliness is Good for the Writer's Soul

I first started writing stories when my third grade teacher showed us how as part of a creative writing assignment. I wrote stories (complete with illustrations) about a girl my age who lived in the woods. I wish I'd kept them.

I started reading a lot when I was in the third grade too. I read through almost all the books in my teacher's classroom library and earned several of those Book-It Pizza Hut gift certificates (remember those?). I especially enjoyed Beverly Cleary's books, because she seemed to understand just how little girls my age viewed the world.

I kept reading all the books I could get my hands on, and I kept writing stories and jotting down my ideas and feelings in journals too. One reason I read and wrote so much was because I didn't have any close friends in grade school. I grew up in a very small Midwestern town and went to an even smaller Catholic school; the cliques formed in the first grade and more or less stayed intact through senior year of high school.

I always hated recess, because I used to stand on the sidelines and watch the girls play tag or other games. I'd call out tentatively and hopefully, "Can I play?" Once in a while they'd say yes, and I'd run with them, happy that I got to be included. More often than not they'd say, "Sure, but after we finish this game," and I'd watch them keep playing until the bell rang and we had to go back inside.

I dreaded class field trips because of the bus rides. I usually didn't have anyone to sit with, so I was stuck sitting next to a teacher or by one of the "couples", who were never very happy to have me invade their "couple" time (yeah, like I was ecstatic about it).

I was one of the "smart" kids, so I wasn't completely ostracized. The other kids were usually nice to me when they needed help with their homework. And if one of the kids had a birthday party where the whole class was invited, then I would get invited too.

When I got to junior high and high school, though, kids started throwing parties where only the ones playing on sports teams or who were on the cheerleading squad were invited. In my hometown, sports was the main form of recreation, so if you weren't athletic, then you were "out".

So I played along for a while and joined several teams and even became a cheerleader for a while, even though I am one of the most physically uncoordinated people you will ever meet.

First of all, I almost always get hit by the ball, even when I'm watching a game; that was why I often would run away from the ball when it came at me, which really wasn't the best idea when I was playing in a game. Second of all, when it came to cheerleading, I couldn't do the splits, because I had this slightly irrational fear that I might rip my entire body in half if I did them. I also couldn't do cartwheels, because I was afraid I might land on my face and then the crowd in the bleachers would shrink back in horror at the sight of all the blood and think that they had stepped into a scary movie titled Klutzy Cheerleader Gone MAD.

The fact that I wasn't good at sports didn't help me make friends and only made even more people make fun of me. In both grade school and high school I was often the butt of other people's jokes. They'd laugh and say, "It's just a joke. Can't you take a joke?" I wasn't even allowed to feel bad about the fact that they didn't realize how much they hurt my feelings. Looking back now, I realize that I was overly sensitive sometimes, and I did take some things way too seriously. But sometimes, the other kids were just being jerks.

Since I didn't have any close friends to talk to when I was a kid, I wrote down a lot of what I was thinking and feeling in my journals. Being one of the "quiet" kids made me a lot more observant of the world around me.

For example, once I was walking around outside with a group of girls from my class; I think we were doing some kind of outdoor class project. I pointed at a bird hopping towards a tree and said to one of the girls, "Look at the way that bird is moving." She laughed and said, "I can't believe you even noticed that!" She told the other girls, who thought it was hilarious too. After that I kept most of my observations to myself, and wrote them down instead. I wrote down a description of the bird I'd seen, and I wrote down how I felt when the other girls laughed at me.

It wasn't until high school, when a few new students arrived, that I finally started making friends. I became a "drama geek", even though I was neither a good actor nor a good singer. That would probably be why I always ended up with the small roles, where I'd show up on stage and say three or four lines and then try not to trip as I made my exit. But even so, I finally made friends and was happy.

The only time I really felt left out in high school was when my friends started dating. My parents were very strict and said that I should focus on getting into a good college, not on getting a boyfriend. I was, however, allowed to go on "dates" to dances.

I don't really think of those nights out as real dates, though. I think of them more as "Let's all get dressed up in uncomfortable, expensive clothes that we will never wear again, and then let's all stand in a circle and show off the five dance moves that we know while we dance to interminably long songs like 'American Pie' and think to ourselves, For the love of God, does this song NEVER END? And then let's all start line-dancing (hey, this was the Midwest) or do the Macarena (hey, it was the 90s, and we all thought it was fun; it wasn't until later that we realized how stupid it looked). Then when the slow songs start up, let's all pair off and sway back and forth and try not to sweat on each other."

Because I didn't really date in high school, I stayed home on the nights that my friends and classmates went out with their boyfriends. I wrote stories about unrequited crushes, teenage bookworms like me, and I wrote down my dreams of escaping my hometown, even though I loved it because it was familiar and the only home that I knew at the time.

When I went to college in a bigger city, I felt freer to step outside of my shell because it was the first time in my life that I was living in a place where everyone didn't know me and every single embarrassing thing I'd ever done. It was easier to meet people during freshman year in particular, because everyone was new and eager to make friends. I went around with a group of girls and guys, but by sophomore year the big circle of friends became smaller; I stayed friends with the people I had more in common with.

At my college, a lot of people went off-campus on the weekends, usually because they went home to visit their families or boyfriends or girlfriends. I stayed on-campus, because my family lived in a different state. I started walking around the city and soaking up as much of it as I could.

A lot of the other college kids I knew were more interested in partying and going to bars. I went with them a few times. Once I went to a bar with a group of people. A few of the girls jumped up on top of the bar and started dancing. They beckoned to me to join them. I am not a very good dancer, and I didn't really want to advertise that fact to all the people watching. I also thought I might fall on top of the people watching and then there'd be all this beer and blood everywhere, and then I'd get thrown out of the bar. I remember looking around at all the people standing around drinking and checking each other out without talking to each other, and I remember how lonely and bored I felt. I made up an excuse and left early, and I wrote down a description of the scene for a story.

Now that I'm older, it's more difficult to meet new people and make friends. After college, most of the people I knew moved away to different cities for jobs or grad school. Now that I'm thirty, most of the people my age are married and have children now; they're busy with their families. Other people I know have full-time jobs and work long hours; they have little time for socializing. I don't get to go out a lot either, because I'm busy with school during the week. My retail jobs often require me to work on weekends when everyone else goes out.

But I do still have a small circle of friends from high school and college. We see each other once or twice a month. But to this day I am still a loner. I actually enjoy doing a lot of things on my own, like watch movies, explore interesting neighborhoods, go to museums on free admission days, watch plays at tiny theaters that sell inexpensive tickets, or eat lunch in cheap but good restaurants. I don't feel the need to always be with other people in order to do things that interest me. In college, I had this friend who would always ask me, "Who'd you go with?" whenever I told him about how I went to a concert or a new bookstore. He could never understand why I liked going on my own.

I read somewhere that solitude can be good for writers, because it makes us more observant of things that we might not have noticed if we were with other people. I think that that's true. And when you grow up feeling lonely a lot of the time, you can either spend a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself, or you can put that loneliness to good use. I don't think it's good to completely isolate yourself, and I don't do that anyway. But I think that the fact that I grew up feeling lonely a lot of the time fueled my writing. I don't think you can't be a good writer if you were/are popular, because you can still generate good material from the memories you make with your friends. Either way, I think it all depends on how you utilize your personality, childhood, and relationships with other people when you sit down to write.

What about you? What motivated you to start writing?