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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Thurs. Aug 10 [1]

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Date: 2023-08-10  

A dear old friend of mine called from Fort Collins, CO, last night. She had left the Bay Area seven years ago, no longer able to afford the rent for housing and her alteration business. She started out the call with an upbeat tone but no sooner did I ask how she was doing than she dissolved into tears, talking about how lonely she has been, how impossible it has been for her to find community, how much she misses the connectivity she had here in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of the triggers, she said, was the recent death of an old dog she had rescued from an organization that seeks homes for old critters. She’s been adopting and losing these old pets for years now. Currently, she has two rabbits living in her backyard. She’s burned out by the pain of dealing with older dogs and doesn’t feel she could take on a younger one.

Of course, she kept apologizing for the tone of the call, for reaching out when she was so upset, but it gave me such comfort to be able to comfort her as she struggled with her despair. We talked a lot about how much has changed in the seven years since she left, and how the world feels so unsafe these days. She expressed her gratitude that climate change has not wreaked its havoc yet where she lives but talked a lot about the fears she has reading and watching the news about what’s happening in the rest of the world.

She’s considering buying a cheap “mobile home” and spending half of her time visiting friends around the country and renting out a small space in Fort Collins where she can continue designing and sewing wedding gowns during the bridal season. She wondered if at her age (74) it’s too late for her to pursue this option.

I’m finding so many of my friends talking to me lately about their loneliness and despair. And for the most part, these are friends reaching out to reconnect with me from my past, one whom I wrote about before hadn’t been connecting with me for 39 years. She is in an okay marriage, still working at a job she loves, and belongs to several book groups. Still, she says, she’s lonely, lacks authentic conversation.

Another friend, a retired high school science teacher who left the Bay Area with her husband for Washington also talks about her loneliness and despair. She’s fortunate to be in fine financial shape so she can visit with family and travel frequently but she realizes she shouldn’t be flying because of her carbon footprint.

Hillary Clinton recently wrote a piece for the Atlantic THE WEAPONIZATION OF LONELINESS, expressing her belief that rebuilding communities could serve as a powerful tool in battling. the exploitation of our social disconnection.

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