Close relationships are the only remedy for loneliness

College represents myriad ideas: more responsibilities, new friends, independence, and exciting educational advances. Although college represents numerous happy notions, while listing all that college personifies, few mention loneliness. With family far away and friends attending different schools across the country, one’s day-to-day life before college is simply gone. Before new relationships are formed, a college freshman often may feel forlorn and dejected.

Although in Miss Brill was considered an old lady in her time, the struggles she experienced are comparable to how freshmen in college can feel. Miss Brill was the epitome of loneliness. One of her companions was her beloved fur, and she even conversed with it. She sat on the same bench every Sunday, observed the people surrounding her, and felt a certain pleasure in being a part of their far more exciting lives. Her isolation extended so far that she believed she had relationships with the people she merely watched once a week. Miss Brill was an solitary woman, and as many teenagers transition to college life, they also experience isolation. There is an adjustment period for eighteen and nineteen year-olds when they leave the comforts of home and adjust to the atmosphere and pace of university life. Many students feel lonely and homesick and although their feelings are generally fleeting, the way students for that period of time is the same way Miss Brill felt every day.

I believe that loneliness is a feeling, a state of mind that almost everyone deals with. Even if a person is surrounded by friends, and even if a person has a great deal of friends on Facebook, loneliness is still an undercurrent of one’s feelings. I am convinced that feelings of loneliness can never be rectified. They can never be changed. The only way to not feel the day-to-day side effects of being companionless is to cultivate and rely on close, meaningful relationships. Close relationships in which a person can share his deepest, most intimate feelings are an integral, if not the most important, part of being happy.

As Katherine Mansfield’s short story depicted her, Miss Brill didn’t have any close relationships. Although she doesn’t recognize that what she is feeling is loneliness, her actions demonstrate how she actually feels. For the people in my generation, college is the time to create lasting friendships and relationships. My parents both reminisce about their college days, and tell me that its not the classes they remember, but the close friendships that began in their freshman year of college. The friendships they pursued in college are still strong today. I hope that the friends I have made since I’ve been attending college last until I am as old as my parents, and even longer.

I was lucky enough not to experience the loneliness that many of my peers felt during the first few months of college; the person I have the closest relationship with is attending the same college as I am. I know; however, that sometime in my life I will feel lonesome and unlike Miss Brill, I will combat my loneliness by cultivating close relationships. That’s the only way to truly be happy.

Mansfield, Katherine. “Miss Brill.” Stories. 1956. New York: Vintage 1991. 298-302. Print.