Loneliness is an increasingly frequent scourge in modern societies and individualization is a logical consequence of the capitalist and patriarchal system. The United Kingdom created the Ministry of Loneliness in 2018 and Japan in 2021. The decision has been made because the number of people feeling alone is worrying, because research showing that unwanted loneliness has physical, emotional and psychological consequences has alerted. At the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation of isolation skyrocketed: people who lived alone could not touch anyone for two months; older people who were in nursing homes could not receive visits and loves from their relatives; pregnant women could not have anyone's bad breath until birth; and we could not greet the dead. Let me give you a few examples.

On the other hand, technology and digitalization condition the time in which we live, so our relationships are conditioned by social networks. We're hyperconnected, but we feel lonely. In one day we can talk about Whatsapp with 30 people and through Instagram we can know that our best friend has had breakfast or that the neighbor we almost did not greet has had the crossfit class. But before we go to sleep we will barely remember anything and we will often be surprised by a great sense of emptiness. And the dream will catch us watching Youtube videos.

Authors from different disciplines have begun to publish their approaches: Invulnerable and invertebrates (Vulnerable and invertebrates; Anagram, 2022), has published Lola Lopez Mondejando and The Current of History (The Current of History; Dream Traffickers, 2022), Almudena Hernando. According to them, the cocktail of neoliberal capitalism, patriarchy and digitalization increases individualization, provoking the rejection of relational identities and, therefore, the devaluation of the values of community, group and collectivity. For example, care.

We can only feel ourselves for many reasons: because we have lost someone we wanted, because our life project and that of the people around us is different, because we do not find meaning to life... I have used three strategies in which the complexity of solitude has overwhelmed me, which, being very elemental, can give tuntos, but which are also sensible. The first is to physically meet people -- friends, family, acquaintances in the gym or co-workers. The second: reading literature, because books help us and enrich our inner world. And the third is creativity: writing, drawing, working with hands. In short, contemplating beauty and transforming pain into art.

These strategies are collected in the literature and I will bring some examples of each. The example of the first strategy is shown in The two elderly (The two elderly; B pocket, 2009). Vela Wallis is a book compiled from the oral literature of the inhabitants of America. A nomadic community has a long period of hunger and the leader decides to expel the two oldest women from the group because they consider their contribution to be small. In addition, you are sure that before or after they die. Although throughout history we see the pain and anger of two old people who are left without community, all the work they have to do for their survival occupy most of the story. Although salvation seems impossible, two issues are the ones that allow them to survive: the experience and the wisdom accumulated being old, and the companies that make each other.

Zergatik panpox (Erein, 1997) by Arantxa Urretabizkaia tells a day of a woman in full mourning after her husband left. The mother is the protagonist and the readers witness her inner monologue, an aspect that weighs more than what happens outside her. He's alone, he feels alone and uses a sad tone. Although the book by Senegalese Mariama Ba, Une si longue lettre (Hain gutuna luzea; Le serpent a plumes, 2015) is very different, it begins with the same premise: her husband has abandoned Ramatoulay by a girl younger than him, and she completes the long letter she writes to her best friend. Pain and sadness are also present and anger is also present.

But the feeling of loneliness in Urretabizkaia's book is much softer. Why? At least because it has the support of a friend who lived in a similar situation. And because the simple knowledge that there is a person who reads, answers and understands changes all the perception of the situation.

It's reading the second strategy I've mentioned to address the feeling of loneliness. Sometimes we lose trust in the human being and fiction is the only way to seek kindness and warmth. Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical book is a clear example: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Why be happy when you can be normal? ; Hardcover, 2011). Her adoptive family is ultracatolic and severe, her mother does not accept anything related to pleasure (sex, friendship, books), has no loving gestures for her and, therefore, Winterson is a teenager who feels alone. The library of the neighborhood, the librarian and the books are the elements that will save your life. “Books do not make the house, they are the house as such; we do it as a door: we open a book and enter. Inside there is a different space and time”, we can read the author.

As a third strategy, we have mentioned writing about facts that have given rise to this feeling of loneliness. The transformation of the facts into an artistic work. I could take a long time here, but I'm going to give you two examples. Quaderno Proibito (Forbidden Notebook; Mondadori, 2022), from Alba de Cespedes, tells the history of Italy in the 1950s. It is a diary written by a woman who feels suffocated in the roles of her woman and her mother between the four walls of her house: she buys the notebook taking care of an impulse that does not know where she comes from and writes in her frustrations and dreams. This will alleviate the anguish caused by the closure of his life.

The comic book La Lègéretè (Lighteza; Hardcover, 2016) by Catherine Meurisse tells the situation experienced by the author himself. After leaving her partner, she spent the night crying and fell asleep in the morning: an hour late arrived at the residence of Charlie Hebdo, her workplace. By the time they arrived they had already committed attacks and all their colleagues had died. In this comic book, we find the initial blame for what's left alive and the questions. The loneliness and the inner emptiness of what no one can understand. Your trip to Rome to reconnect to life is a search for beauty: architecture, painting, sculpture and green areas help you restore emotional order. Contemplation of art stimulates creativity and recounts the history of those who have lived under the recommendation of the therapist in an exciting comic book that uses different techniques.

Loneliness is a complex emotion when it's not particularly chosen. It is usually accompanied by other feelings such as shame, guilt, sadness, anger or confusion. In a book, there can be many memorable characters, willing to be in company when we're alone.