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The Loneliest Moment of My Life
And What I’ve Learned About Loneliness Since
It was Christmas Eve many years ago, and my relationship — the reason I’d moved to London — had ended that morning. It was late afternoon and the sky was already dark as I wended my way through the crowds on sparkly Oxford Street, having spent the whole day wandering city streets alone. Shellshocked. Suddenly I wanted to be home. I clocked an ‘underground’ sign and made towards it. The entire thronging mass of people seemed to be going in the opposite direction as I slowly forced my way towards the tube station entrance.
It was the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life.
There have been other moments:
- first weeks as the new kid at school
- working in a soulless job at an investment bank at Canary Wharf
- waiting for the flight to leave LA and my marriage
- stretches of loneliness in new countries and communities before I found connection
- places that elicited a constant sense that I didn’t belong (LA being the most stark example).
And of all these experiences, the most lonely I felt was smack in the middle of one of the busiest days of the year in one of the world’s largest cities.
