I'm tired of being told to enjoy being alone.
When you're single and/or friendless, everyone says "take a solo trip! Learn to be alone! Date yourself!" Well what if that's been most of my life and I'm exhausted by it?
I'm 27F and I am not afraid to be alone. I am SO tired of it. I am lonely. I miss the sanity of human companionship. I'm tired of getting on planes alone and not getting the full experience of a new place because I have nobody with shared history to share memories with. I'm tired of going to concerts alone, to local events alone. I felt worse and worse doing it, so I stopped.
I've had to build my entire adulthood without a partner, without the stability of companionship, without a consistent witness to my life. My desire for connection never disappeared, I've just had to sustain the chronic stress of living without it. I feel like a prisoner in constant fight or flight. Yes, I've been to therapy for years. It hasn't helped with this.
For two years after college, I went to 20 countries solo before getting diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I went to concerts alone. I met people in hostels, I put myself out there. It is NOT the same as having someone from your actual life doing life with you. Those connections never became lasting or deep.
I feel chronic connection deprivation, and I think it has done real damage. I'm stuck living at home with a parent, in a job threatened by layoffs, with medical bills, and my day-to-day is staring at a screen during work and then having nobody to talk to after work.
My ex years back who had a million friends and a full social life told me: "Stop trying for friends. Learn to be okay with being alone." When he dumped me, I went traveling alone. Something he has never done. At first I tried to make it fun. Slowly, with each trip, I felt worse. It's not the same without people.
I've been chronically unwell with Lyme and autoimmune issues for years and need a fresh start somewhere new. I can't grow where I am. I've developed agoraphobia. I'm so burned out on solo travel that I can't even bring myself to buy a plane ticket. Me, the girl who's flown to four continents alone. "Third places" are more conducive to connection, sure, but not when you're miserable in the place you live and don't want roots there. In my hometown, the streets are encoded with the memory of my isolation. Everything is a reminder of what was never here for me. But I have no connection anywhere else, and moving away to sit in an apartment alone makes me cringe too.
Lonely people get stuck in a negative feedback loop that becomes harder to break the further into your 20s you get. Other people can read it off you too. I feel a bone-aching grief.
There is no single friendship I could make now that makes up for the isolation I've endured. I will always carry the weight of these years. There is a partial permanence to this that makes it hard to feel hopeful. I'm struggling to accept that I've missed fundamental developmental windows it's a suffocating realization. It's a form of existential grief, mourning a socially connected version of my 20s that every human being deserves and that I didn't get to have.
That loss is a permanent part of my timeline, and it has left a massive scar.
How do I accept a life of lack when I am not built this way?
