Loneliness and Isolation

Hi there! Me again. I’m glad you came back!  I hope you enjoyed my introductory blog! You’re discovering another thing about me. My tendency to massively overuse exclamation marks when using the written word to express myself… Oops! Joking aside though, in this blog I wanted to talk about loneliness and isolation. This is something we are all experiencing in a way we never have before because of the Covid-19 virus. It’s also something that we all experience to some degree or other, even before we used the words ‘Corona’ or ‘Lockdown’ so frequently. The feeling of being alone, that no one knows what it’s like to walk in your shoes; it’s a feeling we all know but for people with chronic medical conditions, their condition can be a reason for them feeling it more acutely. We aren’t the only ones, but chronic conditions, such as epilepsy can be the cause of such feelings and I know that personally my epilepsy has been the biggest cause of my feelings of loneliness and isolation throughout life. 

I can remember as a child, growing up with this constant FOMO hanging over my shoulders. The days I missed school or parties because I was unwell or had hospital appointments, I was so scared I was missing out. That I was going to come back to school and there were going to be ‘in’ jokes I would have missed out on and wouldn’t be a part of. When my friends became old enough to go out without adults, there was still a significant amount of time in my early teens when I still wasn’t allowed in case I had a seizure and my friends couldn’t cope. I was terrified I was going to be left behind and lose my friends because of my epilepsy. I was constantly playing catch-up and that was a really lonely place to be.

As well as this fear of being on the outskirts because of my epilepsy, there was also the feeling that I was the only one.  Despite the support system I had built up around myself (more about support systems in a later blog) I was still on my own. I had a fantastic support system of family, friends and church family who were absolutely incredible and I will never take that for granted, nor do I want to undermine the power of a solid support network, but something changed for me when I was able to talk to other people who had also had epilepsy, and had the chance to hear their stories. Growing up as a child, I was the only person I knew who had epilepsy. And that was isolating. I was the only person who was going through this stuff (or at least that’s what it can feel like when you’re only six or seven). As much as there are people who are holding your hand through it all, they don’t actually have the seizures or the scans. They aren’t the one in the hospital bed…again. Finding other people had stories too. Completely different stories with different seizures and different treatments, yet it meant I wasn’t the only one with an epilepsy story. I wasn’t the only one on an epilepsy journey, and that really helped me deal with the isolation.

However, the most important thing has really helped me to deal with those feelings of loneliness and isolation is that, as mentioned previously in the welcome blog, I’m a Christian. That’s meant that I’ve been able to deal with some things relating to my epilepsy in a way others won’t be able to. I am confident of the fact that I have a God and a Saviour who loves me and never leaves me. As my faith has grown, the way that I have coped with the feeling of isolation that can still, at times, overwhelm me, has also matured. Where before I would turn inward, my reaction is now to turn to my Heavenly Father. In the Bible, he says, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you…’ (Hebrews 13:5b) I cling to that promise, which he makes to anyone who has faith in his son. I let my Christian friends and family point me to Him and pray, knowing I am never truly alone, no matter how it may sometimes feel.