I very much appreciate that you distribute that "existential loneliness" is something healthy and normal to experience.
I think existential loneliness is a feeling that is very important for everyone to get over the pain that this loneliness causes.
After my mother's death, I experienced such loneliness, and at that time it was almost unbearable to witness the daily activities and concerns of others and "pretend that everything is normal" (which I did but tried to meet).
People think that "sadness" is something like the immediate tears shed by someone over someone else's death, that "being sad" must be something that should pass quickly. Like cutting your finger and someone saying, "Oh, that will heal. Don't think about it so much."
How complex grief can be was something I experienced when, in the year when my mother died, I thought about and researched the topic of "consciousness-expanding drugs" and watched various lectures from different disciplines. I was looking for exchange of views and insights from people who had dealt more deeply with death and psychic experiences and I hoped for something I didn't yet know exactly what it had been. Only that I had a special interest in the subject, right after I buried my mother.
A friend asked me what I was doing right now, so I told her about it. She immediately started to scold me and what an irresponsible person I was and if I wanted to use drugs and such. I felt like I was hit by a truck and didn't understand her anger at all. After some back and forth we ended our friendship.
This episode had further increased my existential loneliness instead of reduced it and my longing to find a spiritual message in the explanations and experiences of people who hadn't been involved with mind-altering substances for fun, but also had a profound intention, attracted me for that very reason. Any ethnologist or anthropologist knows from his research that people have always used substances to follow a spiritual path. My attempt to approach this was denigrated, ridiculed and dangerously exaggerated by my friend.
People like to confuse their own fearful projections with attaching them to others.
Today I know that I had reached a low point and once again felt the pain that had occurred in previous encounters with my friends. Nobody of the two had touched on the subject just a few months after my mother's death and I felt an oversized malaise. It was an almost physical pain that my presence at my friends house this summer overwhelmed me. It was also because I didn't dare to touch on the subject myself, but I didn't know that at the time. That was the tragedy of it. I just walked around with the confusing feeling that something was not right at all. Afterwards, when I realized why I was so bad, I felt guilty because it hadn't been me who had raised the issue of "my mother is dead" and shared my grief with my friends.
I felt double and triple punished. Once by my friends at the get-together, once by the other friend who confused my interest in mind-altering substances with my "party-ego" of yesteryear, and once by myself after I realized what had actually been going on with me.
Existential loneliness arises when one desperately wants to find wisdom in others and is very needy. But it is always the retrospective that makes it clear that you always reach the ground of loneliness alone and from there you can find your way back to life.
People are usually very busy with themselves, clumsy, careless and egocentric. They only stop being that way when they are struck by an existential loneliness that can be such a good teacher for them that they don't look for culprits afterwards. Your last quote is therefore carved in stone :)
Hi Erika <3 :)
Thank you for taking the time to out down in words this most touching, insightful personal experience. I can relate to the acute sense of loneliness brought by grief, as I experienced it after my father's death 16 years ago. Have you written about grief in your Steemit blog before? It would be wonderful to hear what came out of all the research you did and lectures you watched about it. Personally, I managed to overcome the sadness prompted by the loneliness resulted from my father's death when, similar to what you said, I stopped being angry at the world for being so unfair for "giving" a terminal illness to such a decent man. Culprits were replaced by acceptance. Of course, I believe this to be a byproduct of a certain level or self-understanding.
Your way of attempting to cope with your mum's death reminds of that of a friend. After losing her son she turned to psychic readings and hallucinogenic experiences. Her other two children reacted very much like your friend and, understandably, that just alienated her even more. It took us months to understand that she was terribly afraid of having her son's memory forgotten, or undermined. Once we arrived to that conclusion it was easier for her to come to terms that now he would exist in the family's life in a different way. That realization immensely helped her to deal with her own afflictions and, in turn, to live peacefully with the loneliness caused by her son's physical absence.
Thank you once again for stopping by Erika. It is always wonderful reading your insights and reflections. I wish you, as always, all the best in life.
A tight hug to you all the way from rainy Portugal :*
Thank you, Abi, for your kind response.
It is easier for us people to trade guilty for accepted when we see that others around us are doing it that way. I am glad that you were able to do it. Thank you for your example with the mother and her children, it is very helpful to know such things. People always have good reasons for their actions or omissions, often it is difficult to see the background if you don't ask.
I have not yet written directly about grief on my blog, only indirectly. The lectures and other sources are mostly in German, I only remember two doctors - I'm not sure if you haven't already mentioned the one - Rick Strassman is his name, if I remember correctly, who does research with LSD. The other is Gabor Mate, a Canadian doctor.
I think the most important thing is to have confidence in each other, that if someone has a death to lament, that he may take unusual measures to deal with grief and not be alienated by it. Sometimes it's not possible to ask them why, unless you're very sensitive and open, because people can't always give reasons because they're still in the middle of processing them.
I hug you too, my dear. Receive my best wishes to you and your family :)