On Loneliness

So my big decision from last year was to stop being a therapist so I could start focusing more upon myself. And, so far, it's been a mostly good one. I haven't really liked what I've found, but I at least feel like I have some headspace to work through it.

And one of the biggest, hardest things I've realized is how incredibly lonely I am.

For the longest time, I don't think I've thought of it as loneliness, per se; loneliness, in my mind, has always meant being friendless, and I've never had that particular problem. For most of my life, there have been people around and, if I wanted to talk to someone, theoretically there'd be someone I could talk to. So, surely, I couldn't be lonely.

But that's really what it is. I have a lot of people in my life. I have numerous friends, I have some supportive family members, I know where I can go to find community. But when I go, I feel so distant. I feel so incredibly sad, empty at best or a disaster at worst, not great at my job, desperately single for years and years, worried about how bad I am with little feeling I can do about it.

I want to talk about it with people, I do. I want to connect, I want help. But I feel so pathetic. Like everything is bad. Like I can't relate to anything positive. Like all I can do is kill buzzes over and over again. I don't want to be a downer, so I isolate, and that just makes things worse.

People trying to help hurts, too; I try to be grateful because I know their hearts are in good places and I don't want to be rude. But mostly I just want to connect and, unless you feel pretty hopeless too, it can feel pretty hard to do so.

So I don't really know what to do. I want to trust and share and get close to people, but I feel like I can't because everything I have to share just sounds so very very sad. I don't know. I really really don't.