Accepting Isolation

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I like having a lot of privacy but I have never been very good at being completely alone. I need people near, but at a distance. For instance I like being in a room by myself but able to hear someone doing something from another room, or even hearing someone walking outside does something for me to make me feel less isolated, even though I'm not interacting with that person. This was one thing that was very difficult for me when I lived in a rural setting-- there was total isolation, not even noise from other people, just the various sounds from wind, weather events, and an occasional animal. I never realized how much comfort I get just from hearing people walking by the house or getting in and out of their car or their own houses. So in that sense I'm not an isolationist and I don't think I could ever accept being so.

But on the other hand having someone in too close proximity can be torture.

I never or very seldom had any decent conversations at school (tho really can't remember - yet twice, at seven then at fourteen I when silent) then work was slightly better tho it depended on who worked nearby, there were times when I was an object of ridicule. Yet I was extraordinarily talented.

Like Apatura I like the noise of semi urban traffic, human and vehicular. Rural isolation wld soon send me crazy. I always walk with a purpose yet can often be unable to go into my garden or onto the street outside through fear. Someone with me, a companion wld help. Having a dog makes it easier. I speak to lots of dog walkers. Tho they will never know my name. I have routines, time and geographical.

I have coped with isolation for fifty years, I am loneliest when among people.

Tim Tex - surely 'a friend' doesn't need to be geographically close? You've posted lots and your avatar is easy to recognise. Does that mean friend stuff is a proximity of bodies?

Poor old aspis - they don't half go though it. I've noticed its easy for them (and us - self diagnosed here) - to get bogged down in self pity. Sod it.

Tim Tex - what r u studying?

Even in the NT world, people only have a few real friends in their lives, the rest are just acquaintences - people they know but don't totally involve themselves with. Sometimes it seems much different but it isn't so really. As the world gets busier and people have new stresses to deal with, time with friends is usually the first thing to go.

I've lived in our new home for three years now...and I don't know anyone in our town! I haven't also involved myself much in doing things to meet people. When I'm ready it'll happen, or it won't.

Um, there was nothing to accept for me. Isolation is the default, anything else takes effort. It's not that I don't like people. I just sometimes fail to acknowledge their existence, or fail to see how their should existence matter to me.

If I had a choice, I'd live in a cave on a mountain a million miles from everyone. But I'd have a computer and internet connection and video-chat to keep in touch.

The problem with isolation is that it makes non-isolation feel much worse after you get used to isolation.

bee 33 - I agree - I enjoy my own mind.

I'd love more outings with friends, but I must be given isolation to keep me from sheer crankiness/exhaustion regularly.

At my English course we were asked to write about our hobbies. I mentioned I enjoyed spending time alone. When my teacher read this, he stared at me as if I had grown sunflowers on my nose, and said, "Why? You're so young."

To this day I cannot figure out what's the alleged necessary connection between youth and gregarious behavior.

Carturo222- I too remember a specific time when i wrote in one of my 'compositions' at age eleven - these were used to extract / build a profile that I 'go out into the countryside by myself'. Heavens above such bizare behaviour!!

Even at that age i realised more could be seen, heard and learnt if one was alone. Forty years later i still feel the same. Gerard Manley Hopkins proves my point.

I've come to see it as the lesser of two evils.

I used to accept the isolation, but within the past few weeks its really been irritating me, namely because of the fact im no at the point where i want to find myself a girlfriend, and im sick of having no-one to talk to about just random non-sense person to person. Maybe its im just starting to grow out of my Aspie-ness somewhat, but not fully and i am just trying to figure things out, im not sure yet.

"Hell is others", as they say.
And sometimes I think that's pretty true.