If there is one challenge in life that I have struggled with the most, it’s loneliness. There have been periods in my life that I felt bereft of friends.

I suppose to the people I have known throughout my life, my loneliness may be impossible to understand. It may seem as if I made a deliberate decision to spend the majority of my time in my own company.

As an artist, as a writer, it’s essential to spend time creating, contemplating the world around me. I’m often deep in thought. All of these activities require time spent alone.

When I was a young child, I spent an enormous amount of my time alone. I lived in my imagination. I used to pretend that I was a bird and could fly. I made up stories and drew pictures. I read every book in the library. I walked around my neighborhood and visited all the neighbor’s pets. I would talk to my neighbor Thelma Collins’ cats for hours at a time. She had an outside fenced in cat run area, and her twenty plus cats were free to go in and out of her house.

It wasn’t until I was an adult my siblings told me that they always thought I was an odd child. Different than other children they knew. I was sensitive. And my feelings were easily hurt. I told stories about my adventures in the neighborhood. They believed I fabricated these tales. Which I suppose I did. But the stories were real to me. I talked to animals as if they were my dear friends, and they were. So yes, I suppose I was not an ordinary child.

I had a best friend, Joanie and a whole neighborhood of other kids that played with me. We rode our bikes all over town, roller skated, played hide and seek, chased lightning bugs. All the activities children had in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties.

When I was old enough to go to elementary school, I made a group of friends. Kids who were smart and funny.

Somehow as an adult, I lost the gift or the know-how to make friends. As a child, if you saw someone you thought could be your friend, you would walk up to them, and say, “Hey do you want to be my friend?” And then you had a new friend. It’s not that easy as an adult. You get married, have children, a job. You have responsibilities, not as much free time.

When my husband and I bought our first house, we started a family. We had two daughters, three years apart. I loved being a mother. I enjoyed spending my time taking care of them and teaching them. But I will be the first to admit being home with small children can be isolating. You don’t have a great deal of free time. The only adult I spent any real time was my husband when he came home from work.

If you return to work when the children are young, you interact with other adults. If you are a stay at home mom as I was for seven years, it can be isolating. Or at least that was my experience.

When I was thirty-six years old, I decided to go to college. I attended Temple University at the Tyler Campus in Philadelphia. I earned a degree in Fine Arts and Art Education. I was the only student who wasn’t the traditional age of eighteen in the Undergraduate Program.

I can’t say enough good things about going to college as an adult. I was a dedicated, motivated student with a tremendous desire to succeed and learn. I loved going to class with young students. Their energy, their confidence was inspiring.

It was difficult going to school and raising two young children. I didn’t sleep a great deal during those four years, about three hours a night. But I loved every minute of it. I graduated when I was forty years old.

Fast forward to retirement age. My husband and I retired to North Carolina three years ago. The cost of living and real estate taxes are so much lower here than New Jersey.

So here we are in an area where we didn’t know a living soul. We found that our neighbors preferred keeping to themselves. We rarely see them outside, except when they cut their grass. We take a walk every night with our dog Douglas and wave at anyone we see and attempt to make conversation.

I volunteered with the Guardian Ad Litem. I met people who dedicate their lives and their free time to helping children whose families are involved with the family court. 

I volunteer three mornings a week at a wild animal sanctuary called Animal Edventure, where I met many caring people who dedicate their lives caring for rescued exotic animals. The majority of these people are under the age of twenty-five. 

In conclusion, I would like to say that I have found being lonely can happen at any stage of life. It can happen to anyone at any time. Loneliness is part of the human condition. I have come to accept solitude as part of my life.