For a few days now, I have sat back, analyzing, thinking, and pontificating over the last ten to twelve years, and I realize how lonely I am.

I have always been lonely. Never having someone there to comfort me, think about me, or see about me. I feel like I have always had others on the brain, checking on them, measuring their mental, physical, and emotional health.

It’s not to say that I don’t have friends. I have two close friends whom I’ve known for decades now. One from middle school and one from the first year of college. It’s not that I hate or dislike them, it’s just that I wish I had more friends of different types.

I look at my two friends and the acquaintances I made along the way, and every single one of them had a great social life, whether it’s online or offline. I just feel like I’m a placeholder to everybody until the one friend or partner that they want shows up in their life, and I’m left behind in a cloud of smoke. It’s very depressing, really, to honestly have to look at yourself that way, but that is how I truly feel. Stuck, unloved, unused, yearning, and wanting.

I know the generic remedy for that is to go outside or online and forcibly make friendships and partnerships. You have to talk to people and do things with them, but that’s not how I am or who I am. I have worked jobs where I have had to talk to people. I had friends in K-12th grade. I was a Girl Scout for Pete’s sake! But the yearning persists. I keep wanting more.

Believe it or not, I had my first guy friend recently, and I don’t think I will have another guy friend ever again. Too much stress. Yeah, THAT friend. The friend I fell for who didn’t fall back and instead allowed his new friend, turned girlfriend, to disrespect me. So I’m very scarred from that situation. Don’t think I’ll be healing from that any time soon.

But yeah, the loneliness. Causes depression and anxiety. Makes my bipolar harder to deal with. Then being in my mid-thirties, and not having a partner, is, short of wanting to be with death. Knowing people who have had good and bad relationships, who have known love, is foreign to me. I don’t know what that is.
I don’t know what it truly feels like. Is it fun, exhilarating? It’s something that everyone keeps going back for more. But me, sitting here, bored, lonely, and alone. No space of my own to venture out and seek my claim. I’m just here, as I’ve always been. A Placeholder for everyone else until the right person arrives. When will I not be a placeholder for someone? Where are MY placeholders? I’d at least treat them with the utmost care….but then they wouldn’t be placeholders, right?

They would be my friends. My Love.

I’m tired of wearing a mask everywhere, acting like I’m happy and content with everything. I am not, and I need to start acting like it. I deserve friends whom I can show love and respect and happiness to, and receive it back. I’m tired of feeling inadequate and unwanted. It hurts, and I want it to stop. Obviously, I didn’t add family here because that’s a whole other thing that I don’t feel like getting into.

And all of this to say, I want to stay alone, but I don’t ever want to feel and be lonely.