Lonely This Christmas

When we brood about loneliness in the holiday season, we may picture those who are solitary or isolated, perhaps the elderly, bereft of family and friends. Or we think about unloving or abusive families. But it’s possible to feel lonely not just in a crowd, but in a crowd of loved ones who return your love—but from whom you feel estranged or alienated. “You don’t understand me” is not just the clichéd cry of teenagers to parents but the inner monologue of those for whom uncomprehending distance coexists with unconditional love.

The philosopher Kaitlyn Creasy writes about her own experience of being lonely, bur loved, in an essay that begins with a return to friends from a semester in Florence:

there was so much I wanted to share with them. I wanted to talk to my boyfriend about how aesthetically interesting but intellectually dull I found Italian futurism; I wanted to communicate to my closest friends how deeply those Italian love sonnets moved me … I felt not only unable to engage with…