Loneliness and Worry Despite Having Close Friends

Welcome to another episode of Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. I’m your host, Nina Badzin. I’m a writer, a writing group leader, and a friendship enthusiast. On each episode I have different guests help me get into the nitty gritty of friendship— what works and what doesn’t and all the little friendship stuff we think and worry about, but don’t always say out loud.

Episode 30 is about loneliness and worry despite having close friends. And I’m so excited to introduce this week’s guest— author, Mary Laura Philpott. I’m a huge fan of Mary Laura’s work!

MEET MARY LAURA

Mary Laura Philpott, is the nationally bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink and of Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. She writes about the overlap of the absurd and the profound in everyday life. Her writing has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, among many other publications. A former bookseller, she also hosted an interview program on Nashville Public Television for several years. Mary Laura lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her family.  

Find Mary Laura on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

AND FIND EPISODE #30 ON APPLE PODCASTSSPOTIFY, OR ANYWHERE YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS!  

 

 


Highlights from my conversations with Mary Laura:

— Mary Laura summarized Bomb Shelter in her own words– the outside story and the inside story. She described the inside story this way:

“It’s about being a human being. It’s about walking through this world as a thinking, feeling soul trapped in a mortal body and how frustrating is. And how frustrating it is that all the people we love are also trapped in mortal bodies, and we can’t just love everybody hard enough to keep them safe. So if we can’t do that, how do we get up every morning? What keeps us going? Where do we find joy? Where do we find humor? It’s a story about being a human.”

— More about loneliness from Mary Laura:

“On some level, no matter what your personal circumstances are or your professional circumstances, there is an elemental level of loneliness baked into the human experience because the only world each of us knows is the world we see and hear and perceive with our own senses, which if you wanna get deep and weird about it kind of means each of us is in kind of an illusion of the world, some sensory illusion of what the world is. And we are all trapped in our own perception of the world. The world, as I see it, is different from the world as you see it. And there’s nothing that can change that. So on some level, there’s an unfixable level of loneliness in being a human being because you can only exist within the bubble of your own perception of what you see and hear and feel.

And I think we’re all in some way, trying to kind of reach past that and break the walls of those, bubbles and feel like we’re not alone in our perception of the world. But as you said, sometimes things happen that really kind of compound that loneliness, something happens that you feel like, oh, the people in my life haven’t been through this, so they won’t understand.” 

On finding friends who can relate:

“Finding friends who have been where you are makes a world of difference in alleviating loneliness. Finding friends who are a little bit older, not even necessarily older in age, but ahead of you on the path of life– that’s huge. . . And just having a friend who’d already been there lifted that loneliness off of me.”

Mary Laura on writing a memoir that is still current, not about the distant past. And about not always returning texts:

Bomb Shelter is a memoir about a lot of things that were stable in my life, destabilizing. It is not the kind of book where you get to the end and everything is fixed. You get to the end and everything’s still unstable. I’ve just learned to live with it. So everything that was happening in that book, which this friend knew was still going on in my life. . . I’ve still got things going on with my parents. I’ve still got things going on with my kids. I’m still, you know, struggling. Mortality and and all the things that are unstable in the world. So I’m still doing what the me character in the book is doing, which is trying to regain that equilibrium and regain that balance and find joy every day. So sometimes I don’t text people back because I’m literally like just hanging on.”

We talked about the fine line between worrying and planning and trying not to annoy our friends with our worry!

“If you drill down past the arrogance of I’m a superhero, and if I just think everything through I’ll save everybody, there is something really loving in there, at least for me. And I imagine for you as well. I want the people I love to be happy and safe and to live forever. And so that’s part of why my brain is like, let me think through every possible catastrophe, because surely if I can just think them all through, I can stop them all and I will therefore keep everyone I love safe. And that’s what I really want. Of course that is impossible, but that’s what I really want. What I want is for everyone, I love to be happy and save forever.” ~ Mary Laura

—  I said re: worry . . . 

“I’m really grateful to my friends who will look me in the eye and be like this isn’t worth worrying about. It’s like a nice way to live. I’m just gonna try to emulate them. It’s good to have people around you, kind of like having an older friend who can tell you, this will be okay and it will get better, but get worse. It’s good to have a friend who is not as anxious, sort of live their lives and for us to be to watch them.”

— We talked about when you’re a memoirist sometimes people think they know you better than possibly could. It’s a sign of good writing! It means the writing has helped lift some of the loneliness of the human experience.

Mary Laura said: 

“You can have great friendships and still be lonely because loneliness is a facet of the human experience, especially in times of life when you’re going through something that the people around you are not going through. But I think that’s why we have to be so intentional about putting ourselves with other people and talking and asking how are things going. And then listening. We have to make ourselves do that, even when it’s hard. We can’t just default to, well, we just won’t talk about it. It’s too much.”

— I said: “Sometimes it is on the person going through something to open up. And I do think a lot of people are eager to connect.”

quote from mary laura in black font on pink background

 


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Nina Badzin hosts the podcast Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. She's been writing about friendship since 2014, co-leads the writing groups at ModernWell in Minneapolis, and reviews 30+ books a year on her website.

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Hi, I'm Nina

HI, I’M NINA BADZIN. I’m a writer fascinated by the dynamics of friendship, and I’ve been answering anonymous advice questions on the topic since 2014. I now also answer them on my podcast, Dear Nina! I’m a creative writing instructor at ModernWell in Minneapolis, a freelance writer and editor, and an avid reader who reviews 50 books a year. Welcome to my site! 

Get The Newsletter

I send an email once or twice a month with the latest friendship letters, podcast episodes, book reviews, recipes, and more.

Hi, I'm Nina

HI, I’M NINA BADZIN. I’m a writer fascinated by the dynamics of friendship, and I’ve been answering anonymous advice questions on the topic since 2014. I now also answer them on my podcast, Dear Nina! I’m a creative writing instructor at ModernWell in Minneapolis, a freelance writer and editor, and an avid reader who reviews 50 books a year. Welcome to my site! 

Get The Newsletter

I send an email once or twice a month with the latest friendship letters, podcast episodes, book reviews, recipes, and more.

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