Isolation

I've had many major and minor experiences of isolation.

I dropped out of university for a year. I'd been a social animal riding
on a high of what may or may not have been hypomania. After it I crashed
mentally. I left university and workedin bars and nightclubs before
getting a job in a call centre handling internet support calls. I
withdrew for many reasons. It was classic depression. I even withdrew
from the people I lived with. I would go to work in the morning,
function through the day then get home and dash upstairs to my room to
read or listen to music or lament my life and lost dreams. The only
contact I maintained with the university was through their counseling
service. I managed to get back to university and somehow complete my
exams but I was changed. I wasn't the fun loving person people
remembered. I was a husk. The childish exhuberance had been replaced
with the darkened maturity of age that comes through extended solitude.
Such are change processes and life.

During and after my last two hospitalisation there was a period where I
was mad and came to know exactly why mental illness needs to be
'treated'. I came off a lot of medication very quickly and with minimal
support. Through that process I ended up damaging a lot of friendships
and even to those who actually understand mental health (which was very
few in those days) I was still a pariah. Friendship with me was a burden
for them and any opportunity not to hang out was a blessing for them.
It's not surprising. In retrospect I fully understand.

At the time it hurt a lot. It really did. Why was I such a bastard?
There were times I was so lonely. All I had was my cat to talk to and
occasionally the people living in my accommodation. Long periods of time
would go by where I wouldn't "connect" with people beyond the
superficial and functional (there's a big difference between talking and
really connecting).

People who've had severe mental illnesses get used to spending long
periods of time on their own. As with all things in life a resilience
builds up. Loneliness can be solitude. It can provide a time
introspection. It can be an opportunity to catch up on all those things
that don't get done. It can be something that can be filled with
solitary activity, from computer gaming to creative endeavour to
reading. It takes training and perseverance as with surviving all the
artifacts of mental illness to keep going through the pangs of pain but
that is something we all share: mentally ill or 'normal'.

Isolation doesn't have to be bad but for many people, especially those
going through it for the first time, it can be horrible. The lack of
opportunity for keeping the mind active while isolated can be a
punishment in itself.

Many people without mental illnesses go through periods of isolation.
People studying for professional exams. Entrepreneurs. Lone researchers
and campaigners. Writers. Painters. photographers. The list of
professions is endless. For them it is part of the price that is paid
for what they want to do with their time. The time has a quality
different and, in my experience, the lonliness is easier to handle when
filled with purposeful activity.