#3: The shadow of loneliness

Years ago, I sat across from a mother to share some deeply unsettling news: her child was being expelled due to failing grades.

The conversation began with complaints, which then spiraled into bitter disappointment. But then, during a sudden, heavy silence, she broke down and wept.

It was no longer a story about grades. It was the dam breaking on a lifetime of suppressed emotions. An orphaned childhood. The grueling journey of building a career from nothing with her bare hands. The heavy expectations and dreams she had pinned entirely on her child. And the exhausting days spent forcing herself to look cheerful and composed, just so her second husband wouldn’t view her child from a previous marriage as a failure.

After pouring her heart out, she asked if she could stay in the room with me for a little longer. She was waiting for her tears to dry, so the driver waiting outside wouldn’t see her like this.

I sat there wondering: “Why could a woman so sharp and tough in business, so fierce and independent, only share these deeply painful vulnerabilities with a stranger like me upon our very first meeting? Why not with the loved ones who walked beside her every day?”

That loneliness must have been unfathomably deep.

My teacher once said something that has stayed with me ever since: Humans have at least sixty ways to distract themselves from uncomfortable feelings.

Sixty ways!

Mindlessly scrolling through your phone. Eating when you aren’t even hungry. Buying things you don't need. Keeping busy with things that don’t matter. Watching movies until two in the morning. Cleaning the house at eleven at night. Laughing off your own pain as if it were a joke. Taking on one more task, then stretching yourself thin to grab another...

All of this avoidance points to a single truth: sitting with our own loneliness and discomfort is never an easy thing to do.

Because sitting with it means looking reality dead in the eye.

It means taking a hard look at the widening gap between you and your partner. It means facing the suffocating silence at the dinner table, where a family sits side by side but shares absolutely nothing. It means confronting that sense of isolation in the midst of a full life, as though you are merely living someone else's story.

And so, we choose to run.

But once we’ve run far enough and long enough, the loneliness and discomfort don’t just vanish. They simply shapeshift.

It turns into unprovoked irritability on an ordinary evening. It becomes an inexplicable exhaustion, even when you haven’t lifted a finger. It manifests as suffocating control over your children when they make a minor mistake. It becomes a cold, dismissing shake of the head and an "I’m fine, it's nothing" to your partner, even as a hollow void aches inside you. Or sometimes, it hides in those long, sleepless nights spent aimlessly scrolling through a screen, desperate to cling to a sliver of personal space, only to wake up the next morning feeling entirely empty.

The mother who stayed behind in that room had traveled a very long road in isolation. She coped with her loneliness by being resilient, by climbing to success, and by never, ever allowing herself to be weak.

Until that afternoon, when the story of her child’s grades inadvertently unlocked a door she had bolted shut a long time ago. And the emotional floodgates opened.

I don’t think that was a bad thing. I believe it was the first time in many years that she allowed herself to be truly real.

As my teacher also said: Until we learn to sit with discomfort and see reality exactly as it is, those lonelinesses and wounds aren't going anywhere. They just lie there in the shadows, waiting, right beneath all the busyness we try so hard to smother them with.

At this point, your first thought might be: "But what's the point of sitting with it? Just to feel more pain?"

Not at all.

Sitting with your loneliness doesn't mean drowning in it or indulging it. It means that for the first time, you find the courage to pause, look the truth in the face, and call it by its real name. And then you will realize that you no longer have to view it as an enemy to flee from; you will see it as just another emotion that needs to be listened to.

"These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them."

— Rumi

From that very quiet space of confrontation, you will reconnect with someone you abandoned a long time ago.

Yourself.

Not the cheerful, composed version you put on display for the outside world. Not the capable mother, the dutiful wife, or the successful businesswoman. In that space, you meet your original self, before you were surrounded by responsibilities and titles. You meet a part of you, “The little YOU” from years ago, who carries fears that were never heard, emotions that were brushed aside, and wounds still waiting to be soothed.

That “little YOU” is still there. She is still patiently waiting for you to see her and understand her.

The mother back then stayed in the room, waiting for her tears to dry. I don’t know if, after that day, she ever allowed herself to sit with those hidden corners of her soul again.

But I will always remember the moment she asked to be left alone.

It was the only time during our entire meeting that she didn’t try to pretend she was fine.

And I think that was also the moment she was closest to herself.

What about you? When was the last time you allowed yourself to "not be okay," without trying to fill the void with something else?

*This article was translated from the original Vietnamese version using the AI tool, Gemini.