The loneliest day of my life was January 23, 2016. It was my third day in New Zealand, out of a total of 365, and I decided to visit Waiheke Island off the coast of Auckland. All the tourist brochures said it was worth a visit, and it was accessible to my vehicle-less traveling self. So off I went. I took a tour bus, I ate a burger at a cafe/grill place. And then I went to the furthest beach on the island and looked out at the ocean.
That’s when the loneliness kicked in. I looked out at that ocean and I felt the distance stretch between me and home. The ocean is so vast you could fit the Milky Way inside and still have room.
There is a strength in loneliness. It comes from pulling up your own bootstraps and lifting yourself up with nothing but your arms. But to reach that strength you first have to feel. That’s the most challenging part. Emotions are meant to be felt, and loneliness can be so powerful. You can easily sink into despair, and despair can grind you up into a fine powder and toss you to the wind. Loneliness, if you know how to navigate the currents, can lead you elsewhere.
It was in this loneliness that I found a quietness I hadn’t encountered before.
For two years after I returned from New Zealand, I didn’t know how I would quantify the experience. What can I say about New Zealand that was compelling or awe-inspiring? The act of spending a year alone in a foreign country is enough to inspire some people, but not me. What did I learn there? What did I experience? How did it change me? It took me almost two years to realize the answer to this.
I’ll warn you, it’s kind of a cliche. But I’m going with it.
In November 2018, I joined a group called Are We Delicious? through the Broom Street Theater. Are We Delicious? is a program where a bunch of people get together to write and produce a play in a week. This includes costumes, props, lighting, stage directions, everything. Everything. We wrote for three days, rehearsed for three more, and we opened on the seventh day. It is perhaps one of the most challenging creative projects I have ever undergone and I am eager to do it again. I can’t wait.
In the discussions I had with my castmates about the play we were writing, we talked about the voices in our heads and how they are not always our own. Instead, they are representations of the people with the most influence on us. For me, the loudest voice used to belong to my mother, who would hold me back from doing things I wanted to do. If you’re going to live a fulfilling life, you’re going to have to disappoint your parents a little bit. I got that quote from the internet, but it’s stayed with me. And it applies here, because, against my mother’s wishes, I flung myself to the ass end of the world for a year on a whim.
That’s how I found myself on a beach, taking pictures of seashells, keeping my feet in the ocean water, reaching my arms out to my mother who could not see me because there was a whole galaxy between us. But that’s when her voice quieted down. In the distance between me and my mother, I could no longer hear her voice in my head. The same goes with the voices of my friends. The voices of my co-workers, my squishes, old high school acquaintances, anyone I had interacted with in my entire life.
Gone.
It was a silence I had never encountered before. And it was very lonely.
But in that loneliness, there was something else. It was a little voice, tentative at first, but it grew in confidence as the days went by. I moved to Wellington, I settled in with my host-mom. I found a job, I found a flat, I found some new friends. That little voice was little but it was mighty; it overpowered the other voices I used to have and it kept them at bay. And now that voice is the most powerful voice in my head.
Whenever I’m feeling vulnerable, or low, or like the world is stacked against me, it speaks to me. And it says,
“I flung myself to the ass end of the world for a year on a fucking whim. I can do anything.”
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