“Loneliness it physically feels like you’re in a really small ball being squeezed,” says the 18-year-old Model.
His palms come closer but don’t quite touch. The tips of the fingers are bent against the palms. The vertebrae of the fingers and the lower part of the palms are pressed together.
There is a very small gap between the hand grenades, where the lone person is tightly squeezed. Malla, who is in her third year of high school, has been in such a lonely trap for the past couple of years.
He does not appear in the story by his real name due to the sensitivity of the subject.
In everyday life Malla’s loneliness can be seen in the way that going to school in the morning is stressful. When the school year started in August, he shook the first few days.
“I am not consciously ashamed of sitting alone. But subconsciously, there is a feeling that, uh, why does everyone else have a pair and I don’t.”
The eyes of others distress him.
Malla has sometimes chosen courses to be completed independently, because then she does not have to sit alone in front of others. Such group assignments, where you have to form the group yourself, are particularly distressing for him.
Fortunately, there are fewer of them.
Model is not the only one who has experiences of loneliness. Up to 14 percent of young people experience harmful loneliness in their educational institution, according to the newly published Helsinki Mission’s loneliness survey.
According to a recent school health survey by the Institute of Health and Welfare (THL), about nine percent of students in upper secondary schools and vocational schools do not have any close friends.
Being alone can also be voluntary. That’s when we talk about being alone, that is, a state that you have chosen yourself and that you don’t suffer from. Loneliness, on the other hand, is an unwanted state of being, and therefore it can cause pain.
It is often thought that there are two types of loneliness: social and emotional. Social loneliness is caused by not feeling like you belong to any group. Emotional loneliness, on the other hand, is the result of not having close friends to whom you can talk about anything.
Social and emotional loneliness are equally common, says the social welfare coordinator of the Finnish Red Cross Maaret Alaranta.
In Malla’s case, it’s precisely about emotional loneliness. He has acquaintances in high school and he could spend time with them. However, Malla is not close or feels a sense of belonging with them. Loneliness in this kind of company feels even worse to him than being completely alone.
According to Alaranta, emotional loneliness can have big effects on well-being. Superficial friendships do not offer deep support in a difficult life situation.
Loneliness experienced at a young age can also cause deep wounds to a person, because then identity is just being formed. A young person may feel that he is not important to anyone and that no one is interested in him.
It is particularly damaging if loneliness becomes an identity through which a person defines himself.
Malla studies alone. He is able to concentrate better that way, but he also finds it burdensome. He believes that better concentration can improve his performance, but the feeling of loneliness and bad feeling worsens it.
When Malla started high school located in the capital region, she had always had friends at school. That’s why he wasn’t afraid of being alone even now, even though he only knew a few people from the new high school.
During the first weeks of school, Malla went to talk to a couple of students in the same course, and they started hanging out together. When they went out to eat together, the others also brought their acquaintances along. This is how a new group of friends was born. At that time, Malla also talked with others in the evenings on social media.
However, at the end of the first academic year, being with new friends started to bother me. While in the herd, Malla repeatedly felt that she did not truly belong. Although he was physically in company, mentally he felt that he was alone.
“I was a bit of an outsider at times. Not in the way that anyone would leave on purpose, but I got the feeling that they didn’t really pay attention to me,” he says.
Is several reasons why Malla feels that she is different from the rest of the group. Others are united by a common hobby.
In addition, the others in the group of friends do not share Malla’s ambition to succeed in school. In his opinion, others have little goals for life after high school.
In principle, Malla still belongs to the same group, but in practice she avoids being with them. That’s why he might go for a walk in the nearby forest, to the school library to do assignments or to the gym to work out during recess and jumping lessons.
Malla feels that it is difficult to tell her friends directly that she is not comfortable in their company.
“Although I don’t know if it would be appropriate to say that you would get rid of the problem.”
He has only told his mother and a friend about the situation, whom he only sees in his spare time. At school, he wants to keep a “low profile”.
According to Malla, it is difficult to approach new people in high school. You may not greet others or smile in the corridors. Instead, the gaze may be on the phone and the face may have a gloomy expression.
A group of friends switching seems difficult. Getting to know new people is not possible, because the groups formed at the beginning of high school are kept.
“Perhaps it will be stigmatized if you try to change. That you won’t have friends otherwise if you switch to another group,” he says.
“I am associated with the group I belong to. And there are guys in it who are a little bit weirder than the others.”
In recent years, the opinions of others have started to mean more to Malla. He describes that he now behaves more restrained than before.
“I could [ennen] talk really loudly in public places. Today I’m like okay, that’s not quite appropriate. Age also plays a role.”
He has also changed his appearance to be more neat, so that he would have a better chance of making new friends.
“I started to think that no one takes seriously a person who always dresses in slacks. Such a person is seen as a bit lazy,” says Malla.
Loneliness because of this, Malla has not been able to fully enjoy the traditions of high school.
It felt bad when others took pictures together at the old people’s dances. He missed the extensions because there wouldn’t have been a company where he would have enjoyed himself. He didn’t know his own mate.
The benches celebrated in spring and winter are already exciting.
Fear and pessimism. Malla feels them when thinking about the future.
“If you already know [yksinäisyyttä], why not feel in the future. And if you know the whole life. Life isn’t very nice if you’re lonely all the time,” he says about his horror pictures.
When Malla is asked if she is looking forward to anything in the future, she thinks for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he says and laughs in embarrassment.
“Or… I’m looking forward to graduating. If the writing goes well, I can count on it being over.”
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