Everybody's going out and having fun I'm just a fool for staying home and having none I can't get over how she set set me free oh lonesome me A bad mistake I'm making by just hanging round I know that I should have some fun and paint the town A lovesick fool is blind and just can't see oh lonesome me

Oh lonesome me oh lonesome me

The lines from the famous song by Don Gibson was engraved on my memory cells when Lucy, a girl from my college hostel would listen to it for long hours sitting alone in her corner of the room and kept on crying silently. She was someone who used to remain depressed and lonely when we, the girls, used to go out and enjoy, were busy acting our age. We tried to include her while we chatted and had fun together, she would remain with us, silently listen to us, keenly observe us but would not comment on anything, give brief answers to our questions, smile awkwardly while we would burst out in loud laughs and giggles on humorous eventand suddenly she would withdraw herself and go and sit alone in the window, or guard her privacy by hiding her face behind a book. We used to discuss among ourselves why was she like this? Why was she depressed and crying most of the time.

We knew she was lonely in her personal life, as we never saw her going home during the vacation, no one ever came to meet her, but her financial requirements were fulfilled from an unknown source and she received a big birthday cake on each birthday which she never shared with us and we never saw her eating a bite herself. She would be all the more depressed on her birth day and kept herself behind the closed door in spite of the different types of endeavors of cheering her up. We tried our best but could not help her much except seeing her smiling not more than four five times. After 5 years of leaving college, whenever I listen to this song, it would remind me of Lucy, the lonely melancholic beautywas she a patient of severe depression, or loneliness was her sole problem?

We all are victimized by loneliness, realizing at certain point of life that something is missing, we wait for that something to come and fill up the emptiness in us. But some of us suffer loneliness all through their lives. Loneliness is very common factor that leads to depression but which is not given much importance by the psychological theories and studies. Loneliness can be exhausting, painful and degenerating to human emotions. When we are lonely we feel empty from within, and we distort the normal way of thinking, as a result we over-react to the events of life. When our intimacy requirements are not fulfilled, or there is someone in life, and even then, somehow the emotional needs remain unsatisfied, the outcome of such situation is an emotional void. If we can address the problem of loneliness we can increase the potential of better life ahead. But first of all we need to identify the loneliness within us, what exactly is the thing we want from life. We only bring destruction in the course of life by taking random decisions when we fail to determine the missing factor in life.

Depression is a facade taken by loneliness. Symptoms are same like withdrawal, anxiety, lack of motivation, feeling a vacuum in the heart etc. and people are treated for depression and the loneliness factor remains unattended and so the depression is never cured from its roots. The dissatisfaction and the emotional void kills us slowly and we lead an aimless life without any drive for achieving anything. When depression can be taken care of by certain antidepressants, and therapies, the hidden loneliness is overlooked and ignored most of the time. As a result the apparent depression-like symptoms continue. Unless the underneath reasons of loneliness are analyzed and treated, the depression-loneliness duo will keep on coming back and the problem will remain in chicken n egg situation.