My Childhood Loneliness Haunts Me

Sparks Generated by a "Friend"

My Friend Tommy Wilhelm

Over the years, I’d spent time with Tommy Wilhelm, but it was only the last time we met that I recognized in him a deep kinship of loneliness. Outwardly, Tommy and I are very different. He’s fifteen years younger, a failed actor, has a family life that’s a tragic mess, and speculates in commodities with the last of his money under the spell of a ludicrous man he knows to be a liar and a con artist. He also lives on the Upper West Side during the mid 1950’s and was born not of man and woman but from the imagination of Saul Bellow who breathed life into him through the pages of the novella, “Seize the Day.”

A great author allows us to know a character with a completeness and clarity we rarely meet in real life. Bellow lets us see into Tommy as he really is, a profoundly lost and lonely soul. And in understanding and empathizing with Tommy, I recall the loneliness of my childhood.

My Childhood Loneliness

In seventh grade, I switched schools, and for the next two or three years, I was painfully lonely. I was a shy boy, scared of girls, with nothing to be confident about. I recall being alone in my room most nights and weekends. And dreading, with that telltale pit in my stomach, the approach of Sunday night bedtime, because I knew I’d wake to Monday morning and school.

Back then, I never said to myself, “I’m lonely,” but instead I distracted myself by playing games against imaginary opponents or reading fantasy books. A complete immersion in different worlds could shield me against feelings that were too painful for me to handle at that age.

Now as an adult, my circumstances have changed with a large family and many dear friends. Still, when triggered, my childhood loneliness comes back to haunt me. It can sting more than the original, because as an adult I’ve lost my childhood ability to escape completely into an imaginary world of a game or a book. So, my defense is to tell myself, “this feeling’s only an echo.” But that’s an intellectual defense, so it’s ineffectual against feelings. Memories, good or bad, that come back to us, unbidden and involuntary, without any mental effort on our part can hit us with great and overwhelming force, as Proust writes about so well.

I’m writing this post, because I experienced loneliness yesterday afternoon. I was alone in our apartment for several hours, and felt that unmistakable pit in my stomach.

Before I stopped working, my business trips triggered loneliness. Sitting alone at night in my hotel room waiting to meet strangers the next day, I’d think what a cruel world it was that had sent me away from my wife and children.

Sometimes, I can feel lonely at a party surrounded by people, even if I’m in the mix of the conversational buzz and hum, because I can still feel the sadness of being that scared little boy who thinks he doesn’t belong.

They’re unpredictable, these feelings of despondency. They’re usually short-lived, but twice they lasted, not for hours or days, but for many months. Those were awful periods, times I could say I was depressed..

Bellow’s Seize The Day

“Seize the Day” is the advice given to Tommy Wilhelm by Dr. Tamkin, his parasitic investing guru and false friend, as they go to the brokerage firm where Tommy will lose all his money. The title of Seize the Day is a mockery. The action is confined to a single miserable day, but what dominates Tommy’s thoughts are regrets for his past mistakes and dread of his loveless, hopeless future. He’s separated from his wife and children who he cannot support and from his mistress who he cannot marry. He lives in a residential hotel on Broadway in Manhattan with his disappointed, unsupportive, unyielding father. His mother is dead and he’s estranged from his sister. 

After he’s lost every penny, the novella ends with Tommy seeking shelter in a funeral home where a dead man, a stranger, lies in an open coffin. The sight of the dead man breaks the dam of Tommy’s sadness and he begins to cry “with all his heart.”

Here’s the last paragraph of the novella.

“The flowers and lights fused ecstatically in [Tommy’s] blind, wet eyes, the heavy sea-like music came up to his ears. It poured into him where he had hidden himself in the center of a crowd by the great and happy oblivion of tears. He heard it and sank deeper than sorrow, through torn sobs and cries toward the consummation of his heart’s ultimate need.”

What is “deeper than sorrow” and the “heart’s ultimate need?” To me, it’s loneliness and the desperate need for connection. In the funeral parlor, Tommy finally finds a shared connection of loneliness with a dead stranger, for who can be more alone than the dead?  This connection with the dead man, fellow sufferer of loneliness, provides  an outlet for Tommy to express pity for someone other than himself. And in that he finds a release.

Loneliness, Empathy, and Helping Others

I can’t do anything for the fictional Tommy Wilhelm, but I can battle my loneliness by helping people who actually exist. I find it impossible to be lonely if I’m helping someone. Because when I’m helping someone I’m needed. And feeling needed, feeling necessary, is the ultimate weapon for me against loneliness.  

Why this particular re-reading of “Seize the Day” connected me to Tommy in a way that previous readings had never done is a mystery. Maybe as I’ve gotten older, my emotional guard has become a more lackluster sentry.

Or maybe memories of childhood are more poignant when you’re older. You look back over a longer vista of your life, and you realize that your childhood stands out, a mountain range that formed your life’s landscape.

Comment Question

When do you experience loneliness and why?

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Below is a song that to me captures loneliness with a beautiful melody and piercing lyrics.