Loneliness Won't Leave Me Alone

In this episode, I get into the difference between being alone and feeling lonely, sparked by a song lyric my dad shared with me: "loneliness won't leave me alone." Drawing from growing up as an only child and going through two marriages, I make the case that loneliness is internal, not circumstantial. You can feel isolated in a stadium full of people or in the same bed as your spouse, and you can be completely at peace sitting alone in your house.

I used to run from difficult feelings after my first marriage ended, filling the silence with going out, dating, and staying busy instead of doing the real internal work. My message: solitude isn't something to fear or fill with distraction, it's where growth happens. I talk about historical and spiritual figures who found clarity in periods of being alone, and I encourage you to sit with yourself intentionally, build positive coping habits, and use that time to grow, so that when you do reconnect with others, you show up as a better version of yourself.

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Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back to HMG Podcast. This is your host, Hashem M. Garrett. Thank you for joining me one more time. For those who are new to my show, I am Hashem M. Garrett, motivational speaker, licensed master social worker, educational consultant, author of my first book, How to Fall Up. You can find it on Amazon and other platforms. Every show is a little different. Sometimes it's educational. Sometimes it's inspirational. Today is, I think it's a little bit of inspiration. Here's the the topic: loneliness. I've been seeing this uh this topic being brought up a lot um when I'm reading various articles and just talking about how people are feeling lonely. I don't know if you ever heard this song. I I haven't heard it, but I was told about it. The lyric kind of goes, loneliness won't leave me alone. Such a profound term. I have to look it up. So if you know about it, share it with me. I heard it from my dad a few months ago, probably a year ago. But here's the conversation that I wanted to have with you. Yeah, loneliness is a real thing. I'm I was born the uh only child by my mother, raised in a home basically as an only child. I have a sister who's a few years older than me, but I grew up for the most part just being raised in a house where there were no siblings. My mother had a, she has a sister who uh she's a half-sister, and she wasn't close by, and so my mother was an only child. So I just grew up in a in an environment where I was the only person in the home for you know what seemed like the the norm for me. And so I think growing up, I've always been alone, but is there a difference between being alone and lonely? And I don't think there is. So today my my conversation is to say, well, how do we move past loneliness and then get into the stage of, okay, I am alone, but then I can call somebody, I can go do stuff, and I can not be alone. Because the the reality is you could be at a stadium full of thousands of people and still feel alone. You could be in a crowded room and still feel alone. Alone, loneliness. It's more internal than external. I've been married, I've been married twice, right? First one I don't think really counts. That should have been a do-over. That was like she was really like my high school sweetheart, right? Should have never got married. This is a whole nother conversation. Remind me at some point. I'll circle back at this on another show. But she was really like my best friend, and we were only married for maybe like five or six months. It didn't really last, but we were together for like 15 years, right? From teenage high school years all the way up until our early 30s. But then I got married again, and I was married for a little over 10 years, I don't remember how long. But the point that I'm making is sometimes even in a marriage, you can feel alone, right? I know what that was like when you're in a relationship with somebody and it's not working, and you could be in the same room in the same bed, and it feels like it's a it's a wall between the two of you. So feeling alone and being lonely can happen even when you are around someone. So loneliness has to be internal. It's not just about not having anybody around you. Yeah, that's a key part, of course. That that makes sense, right? You're alone because no one is around. But what happens when you're alone and people are around? I think that's even more like psychologically harmful. And so, what do we do? And so, my message today is being able to be comfortable and be at peace with being alone or being lonely, and know that this is something that you have to work on, right? And so if it ever happens again that I get married, then I will have to work on making sure that I don't build that wall up of feeling alone and maybe alienating my significant other, my partner, and because I'm in my own headspace about something, and I'm feeling like a need is not being met, and I don't, I'm not verbalizing how I feel, and that person isn't verbalizing how they feel. But the the reality is whether you are in a home by yourself, physically by yourself, there's nobody else in the home, or you are in a home or in a space, and other people around, and you feel lonely, and you feel alone, that's some work that we have to do internally. And the reality is I'm 100% sure that my significant others, my wives, at the time, they felt alone, even though they were married. You can be with someone and still feel alone, you can be alone and obviously feel lonely. So, how do we how do we fix this? The first and simple, most direct thing that I have learned is be at peace with being by yourself. Be at peace with it, be at peace with yourself. And hopefully, if you are at peace with yourself, if I am truly at peace with myself and I enjoy where my life is, and I if I'm content and I am happy, then whether I'm in the house by myself, reading a book, watching a movie, cooking, doing whatever, I should be at peace with that. If I am in a house with my significant other, my partner, I should find peace with that. And so I just hope that this topic of feeling alone and being feeling lonely and being alone is not something that is going to bring us down, but if anything, maybe it allows us to just do that that introspective work and just figure out why I feel bad when I'm by myself. Because the great work, the great work from the ancient books, the great work was happening when the great prophets were by themselves. Peace be upon all the great prophets, the Moses and the Jesus and the all of the great prophets. It seems like they found themselves when they were by themselves. There was a certain amount of enlightenment that came when they were alone, when they went off into the wilderness and spent some time alone and then came back and were a better version. And that's what I think some of us just really have to do is just really be comfortable, but not get to the point where we are so comfortable being alone that now we've boxed ourselves off from even having meaningful relationships. Because I know the feeling of feeling alone and be like, oh, I don't like this. After my first marriage, I was like, Yeah, I gotta get out. I don't want to just sit in the house and sulk and miss my and I don't, you know, want to listen to certain songs and all of that type of stuff. And I was out, I was having a good time. So I thought going out to clubs and oh, let's go to the bar, let's go to the club, let's go have a drink, let's go hang out, let's hang out with me. Because guess what? I didn't want to have to deal with me. I'd rather run from me, I'd rather run from the feelings that I needed to process and deal with. And so whether it was smoking some weed and chilling and laughing and having a good time and going to have a few beers and going to the club and going to hang out with friends and going on trips, I was doing and dating, I'll living my best life, living my best life. Yeah, I was I was balling out, having a great time, so I thought. So I thought. And so what I've learned is after the second marriage, is yeah, I I that coping of not being able or not desiring to deal with whatever I was going through, yeah, that's not gonna be the right way to cope and and process how you feel. Do the real work. The real work is the painful, it's the it's being alone intentionally, being intentionally alone because you need to work on yourself. You need to work on your credit, you need to work on, you know, the set those goals and accomplish them in one thing after another. Do the work, be celibate for a while. Do the work. And are you gonna feel alone at times? Sure. But when those moments come, because God works in mysterious ways, the universe works in mysterious ways, is that as you continue to process feeling alone and being lonely, guess what? The phone is gonna ring, and you know that you're gonna think about that person, you're gonna think about somebody, and you know what you should do? Give that person a call. And next thing you know, you're laughing and you're joking and you're talking, and they say, Oh, by the way, there's this event that I'm having. You should come out. Boom, you go out, you have a good time, and you break up the monotony of the goal setting, you break up the monotony of doing the introspective work, and you go out and you have some fun. But you all you find a balance, is what I'm learning. So being alone is okay. Feeling lonely is okay. That is natural, but do the work. Be alone, but do the work. Right? When you get back out there and you're talking to people and you're at the house of worship, you're a church synagogue, you're at the mosque, you're at the gym, right? Hopefully, when you get out, right? You you just you know how to verbalize and have those real meaningful conversations and just enjoy yourself. And and then when you come back home and you get ready for work and you do whatever responsibilities and family, just be okay with being alone. And you don't have to be alone all the time, and you maybe you'll find that significant other again, you'll find that partner, you'll you build community, you connect with people, but it's okay to come back. Right, but we have to build community, but we have to do the work. We have to do the work, and so that's today's message, man. It's okay to be alone for a little while, because that's where some of the great work happens. Some of the great work happens when we're by ourselves, and history shows us that. Can't find yourself until you're by yourself. And it's okay to be alone for some time, do the work, build those positive coping skills, and watch what happens once you reintroduce yourself and you get into the next relationship and the different jobs and the different things. Maybe you'll be a better version of who you were prior to being isolated. But we don't want to stay in these silos too long, we don't want to stay in the bubbles too long because then we can become too comfortable being alone. And now we right and and so we have to make sure that we do the work, get back out there. Alright, listen, I hope you enjoyed my rant. I'm gonna have to sign off now. But remember this one saying you are special, and there's nobody in the world like you. Whatever is rare or unique has enormous value, and it is the same with you. Have a wonderful evening. Have a wonderful day. If this is the beginning of your day, be intentional. Thank you. Stay well.