Content Warning: feelings of loneliness and isolation described.

“I can only be said to truly know who and what I am, only because there are others who can be said to truly know who and what I am.” Alasdair MacIntyre

Loneliness is a characteristic. It’s a distance you feel when you’re alone and it’s a distance amplified around other people. The feeling travels with you. You start to associate with your loneliness more than you associate with anyone else or anything else. The barrier that you construct between yourself and others becomes exactly the source of your self-identification. You are who you are because no one truly knows who you are; because no one feels the way that you feel.

But how long can you be like this? Ungrounded, disconnected. You’re this cloud of self-delusion in perpetual motion. How do you affirm your life when other people can’t?

“I cling on to fantasies because I’m afraid of losing my identity”

My delusion is my affirmation. I cling on to fantasies because I’m afraid of losing my identity. Some mixture of being smarter than I am, more determined than I am, more capable — come together in their necessity to contrive some sense of self.

Or once in a while it’s just apathy. I drop the need to be affirmed by identifying with my own worthlessness.

And it’s so inertial. There’s safety in resignation because you don’t have to confront your dysfunction. But going outside is exposing. Seeing people live naturally and easily only makes you feel more isolated, more alienated. Even cynical and jealous, sometimes. You know it’s f*cked when going to Sainsbury’s becomes an exercise in existential dread, but here you are anyway. Lockdown is being eased, but it’s kind of scary. Because maybe you’re the problem.

So instead, you just stay in your room. Because there’s some comfort, maybe even cosiness, in its predictability. Forget dinner, you can just drink some water and think about food tomorrow. It feels like your day was always going to end like this anyway. So, you get under your duvet, put on the same music, and think the same thoughts. Claustrophobia feels homely.

But after enough time, there’s a part of you that recognises it’s unsustainable.

That distance from other people has become a distance from yourself. Reflecting on experiences isn’t intimate and emotional anymore; but intellectualised and distant. It’s a disorientating relationship with your past. And there’s no continuity in your life because you can’t identify with those experiences. Sure, life felt different for some version of yourself, but there’s nothing that connects you to that person. Maybe this is what presence is — but it doesn’t feel enlightened: instead, removed, empty.

And what comes next? How do you plan for the future when you can’t even locate yourself in the present?

It’s weird, but I want to say that things aren’t really this bad. That all of these thoughts are pretentious, hyperbolic, and they don’t make any sense. ‘Stop indulging yourself and go outside more.’

And maybe that’s all true, but I guess self doubt is part of the problem. It’s just difficult. And it’s f*cking confusing. But today being better doesn’t mean that yesterday didn’t happen; that I won’t feel the same way next week.

“Loneliness is so oppressive and it’s so destructive. I just hope that you feel seen”

I don’t feel shameful or embarrassed anymore. Instead, there’s something really liberating about acceptance. Not just that I’m lonely, but the extent to which it can control me. I don’t care how this makes me look, and I’m not going to punish myself for being honest.

I just hope opening up like this speaks to someone. Nothing else in this piece really matters. Loneliness is so oppressive and it’s so destructive. I just hope that you feel seen. And I hope you know that you aren’t alone.

[If you need someone to talk to, visit https://cambridge.nightline.ac.uk/]