Let’s Get Real – I’m Lonely

TW for mental health

Let’s face it, the past almost two years have not been “normal” for anyone, and I don’t believe there is any such thing as “normal” as we know it any more. I feel like the covid pandemic has changed things forever, and we’re best moving forward instead of trying to go backwards to what things used to be like.

If it was only the pandemic had happened, I might find myself in a slightly better mental health state than I do today – but for me, things are a bit more complicated. Turns out, I’m lonely. Lonely to the point of being depressed and spending a lot of days a mixture of angry and sad. Not only has the pandemic happened, but for the past 1.5 years I’ve been posted to an isolated post in the far North of Canada. For those unfamiliar, I live on a reservation, there’s nothing but dirt roads for 200km in any direction. Our internet on the best of days is 5mb/s and our upload speed is .02. There’s no grocery stores within a 6h (3h each way) drive, and I had incredibly high hopes of getting involved with the community and learning the culture, except the pandemic happened and then well, people don’t like my family (even though they’ve never met us) because my husband is RCMP. A lot of people don’t like me, either.

Let’s talk about that a bit. I’ve always grown up thinking that you should speak your mind – but that is not true. You should NOT speak your mind if you want friends. People do not like it when others speak their mind. I always thought ‘hey, it’s OK if your opinions differ, people will see past that, and you’ll come out alright’ – NOT true. Arguments are what break friendships apart. I’m not talking opinions like whether or not we should all get vaccinated (we should, I’m not even willing to discuss that) but simple things. Being confrontational is not a friend trait that others admire. Humans also tend to be pretty self centered. They want to talk about themselves (I’m a fine example of that this AM) and getting them to look past their own nose at the greater picture is a difficult task. There is no real point to this post except to say yeah, I’m lonely. I find it difficult to make friends, I am not used to ‘playing nice’ and that usually ends up backfiring.

I have lots of acquaintances, and people I ‘talk’ to in an online sense and have for years now. I am fairly certain that I know more about any of them than they know about me. In real life, I’ve made attempts to be friendly and make friends and then I get screwed over and hurt, and I know it’s because I’m difficult to handle, I’m not overly social, I’m not overly friendly, I’m confrontational. I get angry quickly and cool down just as fast. I love to argue and debate and to me it typically means nothing much and five minutes later I’ve moved on, but for most people it turns into something a lot more complicated.

I don’t work, and am a full time Mom, so my hours of when I’m available or online are sporadic at best. I cannot expect anyone to instantly be around when I need them, and I have no idea how to make friends as a grown up. So I sit here and write this blog in case there’s someone else out there going through the same thing. We’ll be OK. We always are. But it sure is lonely.