အိမ်တွင်းပုနး် (eain twin pone)

FEATURE | ISSUE TEN | ISOLATION

Written by Mona Aung | @htet_htet_mona | Contributing Writer

Growing up, she was known in her family as အိမ်တွင်းပုန်း(eain twin pone), an introverted homebody. Living amongst buzzing social butterflies, the volume of words, or just general sound, she generates daily is undeniably lower. She loves speaking, yet she struggles. She tends to take her time with words, acutely aware of the power and weight of a sentence. She’d rather listen more than make others listen to her first and is quite comfortable sitting in silence with another person. She dislikes being spoken over in dinners and gatherings, having her thoughts and intentions assumed or imposed by others, or being criticised for holding her own independent thoughts and beliefs that put her in a non-conformist role in a close-knit community. Her quietness is occasionally mistaken for passivity by some relatives, family friends, and employees of her parents’ construction materials business. 

Having substantially older siblings and mostly absent yet strict parents provided very few opportunities for companionship as a child. At home, her aunt, her father’s cousin, was the only person who listened to and cared deeply about her thoughts, feelings, and life. She was her special person, and she was hers. Hence, the early separation from her aunt, whom she saw as a motherly figure, utterly broke her. She was 11 years old when her aunt moved away to get married. Looking back, that specific departure must have been the turning point for the youngest child in a Burmese Asian household: she stayed in her room more often and talked less and less.

These experiences left her with a lingering sense of separation, impacting how she sees herself, her worth and her place in this ever-moving world. She was the "good quiet girl" who did not ask for much attention from her family. 

However, she learnt to use isolation to her advantage. Solitude has been her power and a major source of serenity when life gets overwhelming. In the company of her thoughts, hobbies, and stories in the form of books, movies, comics, art, and music, she feels most at home. She sometimes wonders if reading is what built her individual personality. During young adulthood, she became particularly drawn to texts on pages or screens, seeking explanations for the agonies she faced at home and in school, particularly the love she felt for her parents and her best friend, and making sense of the complexity of emotions and thoughts, especially when they got extreme. Then, she discovered the world of the humanities, in which psychology told her why people behave a certain way; sociology showed her the external cultural factors that shape some private pains; and philosophy taught her that the endurance of human suffering is a natural part of living. 

In the last 2 years of high school, alongside teenage self-image troubles, her first significant friendship heartbreak drained the life out of her, drip by drip. Not only did she feel unseen at home, but she was also fading in her friendship circle. However, after reading Alain de Botton, a contemporary philosopher who described heartbreak as grief over the death of a future, a self, and a perspective, she began to understand self-compassion. She learnt not to internalise the crisis - initially believing that the friend she loved dearly was choosing others over her after seeing something defective in her. Rather, she spoke up about the pain and her needs openly. 

For the first time, she sided with herself. She sat through the deep ache of alienation at a young age. Without anyone to confide in, she confided in herself. 

I still sit in that space of discomfort and fear of loneliness, from time to time. However, there is a sense of reassurance in realising that the lonelier the thought, the more universal the feeling often is. Meaning human beings are together in our loneliness, and we actually want the same thing: to belong, to feel seen, to feel understood. I finally see that when I'm seeking solitude, it's for the love of my own company, and when I'm disappearing, it's because I'm scared.