Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn’t erase it.

Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.

I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.

There have been times when I felt that I might die of loneliness. People sometimes say they might die of boredom, that they’re dying for a cup of tea, but for me, dying of loneliness is not hyperbole. When I feel like that, my head drops and my shoulders slump and I ache, I physically ache, for human contact—I truly feel that I might tumble to the ground and pass away if someone doesn’t hold me, touch me. I don’t mean a lover—this recent madness aside, I had long since given up on any notion that another person might love me that way—but simply as a human being.

These days, loneliness is the new cancer—a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.

When you’re struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people’s, to have to try and manage theirs too.

Sometimes you simply needed someone kind to sit with you while you dealt with things.