Have you ever had that feeling like there is something missing? When you look in the mirror and you know there is something wrong, but you can’t exactly pin it? Now, imagine looking in the mirror, only this time, there is no reflection, which is true loneliness. To not even register yourself, your emotions, your feelings. It’s called self-isolation. It happened back in the great depression, in books, and still even today.

Self-isolation has to be the worst form of loneliness because you simply end up even hating yourself. You detach yourself from everyone, and then you become depressed a depression leads to your body becoming lethargic and you can take the form of death. An example of self-isolation is when the Great Depression hit house wives. They would talk to their gal-pal’s at the market, but when they didn’t have any more money to spend, they felt that they had to isolate themselves from their friends, and that just made the situation worse. They became lonely and they lost their friends.

Another example of self-isolation that can be found in Of Mice and Men, especially Lennie because of his character flaws he couldn’t help but kill things; it was like being a kid trapped in and over grown adult’s body. All that strength with such an immature mind, he didn’t know any better. He was constantly running not meaning to do what he did. He sort of knew what he did was wrong, but he couldn’t help it. The only way to fix it was self-isolation. Cutting him off from everyone and in his case it was even worse, death. There was no way in his time frame to fix a mental disability, and George knew he would end up in jail, and George also knew Lennie couldn’t handle that. So, he put him out of his loneliness of not understanding why he did what he did.

A modern day example of self-isolation would be like what teens do on a daily basis. Now days because of internet and such, teens wrap themselves up in it way too deep, and sit there for hours, isolating themselves from real life friends, family activities, school activities, and more. They feel that a form of entertainment is more important. Before long they are so caught up in what they pretend they are to the people they chat with over games, they forget whom their real friends are, when their siblings birthday ways, what the date is, when their English paper was due. This is all a form of self-isolation; you are hiding who even you are from you.

To isolate is, “to set or place apart; detach or separate so as to be alone.” (Dictonary.com) to self-isolate would be to set yourself apart from others, and society. This is the greatest form of loneliness because you simply have no attachments to nothing, and soon, you will even abandon yourself. It’s like looking into a mirror, and there be no reflection staring back.