Information Related to "The Loneliness Trap"
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A
new study shows that the number of Americans without close friends has
doubled in the last 20 years. "Americans are far more socially isolated
today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of
people say they have no one in whom they can confide" (Shankar Vedantam, Washington
Post, June 23, 2006).
That's not really surprising to many of us. We know loneliness can strike anyone, anywhere, even in the middle of a crowded college dorm.
Imprisoned in my mind
My first year of college I had a scholarship to pay for room and board, so I moved into the dorm of a small college less than 50 miles from home. I could go home on weekends, still see my church friends, and there were even a few people from my high school in college with me. What more could I ask for?
My roommate, another freshman guy, was easy to get along with, though as time went on I didn't see him much. By second semester he asked to move to be with his circle of friends. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the question, What did I do that made him want to move?
The girl I liked at church had grown distant, and my calls to talk to her were taking on a desperate tone, even to my ears.
The college assigned me another roommate, a prisoner on work release (study release?). He was probably in his 30s, and we didn't seem to have much in common. But he was only there during the day, since he had to go back to prison at night, so I rarely saw him. For some reason those nights felt kind of strange.
I was busy with my heavy load of classes and writing for the college newspaper, so it was okay that I didn't really have a social life, I thought. But I found myself listening to melancholy music (even one of my prisoner roommate's albums) and feeling intensely lonely. Here I was a college student, and I was feeling like a scared, abandoned, homesick little kid.
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