I’ve got a confession. I am utterly, heart-sinkingly lonely. And I am happy to wager that most people feel the same or put tremendous effort into avoiding it at all costs, only to find that you can still be lonely in a crowded room or with the person you thought was your person.

This loneliness kept me in an unhealthy, unhappy relationship for months, wishing I had the courage to step out and give myself the chance to live a life that could be more authentic and truer to what I imagined for myself. I cried every other page of Glennon Doyle’s Untamed and quoted it to my therapist at great length; I wished I had the bravery to choose what I deserved and wanted, but struggled with the great fear of finding myself alone at the end of every day. Of not being held, or taken care of, or wanted for company.

This feeling of disconnection extended outwards into every aspect of my life - my friends, my family, my work, my goals and aspirations. It wasn’t that those friendships or family were any less caring or meaningful than they had been previously but I felt like a shadow when I showed up in them - like they would be able to see that I was stuck in a situation I was choosing every day despite a deep knowing that it was unhealthy and it embarrassed me to let them see that. I’ve been wading deeper and deeper into a depression, feeling so distant, like I was floating away from myself. As Chrishell put it in Selling Sunset, it’s like a wave crashing over you but you don’t know which way to swim towards to get a breath of air (you know you’re going through a breakup when reality TV is your source of inspiration).

I started therapy, I found myself a life coach, I worked out, I took online classes - these things all sound healthy and they were in a way, but they were also me trying to find control; to locate a solution to a problem that I already had the answer to. Why did I feel so lost? Maybe I just needed to run a 5k to get out the nervous energy, or finish a course at Columbia so I could feel accomplished again. But then I stopped eating, I started waking up in the middle of the night to throw up from anxiety, I fell asleep for 3 hours in the middle of my workday. I didn’t recognize these things as my bodily guideposts - urging me in a different direction, away from this person who had nothing in him to give to me. When you know something in your gut but you don’t follow it, your body will try to make it hard to ignore.

What I’ve been thinking about is that perhaps I felt lonelier with myself in that relationship than I will feel outside of it. Perhaps when I thought I was building a foundation in my relationship, I was actually building a wall between who I was pretending to be and instead, betraying the self that I wanted to become. This distance between my head and my heart made it difficult for me to trust myself; the loneliness made me deeply lethargic.

The bone deep weariness meant that something that was once my most cathartic outlet - writing - was something I hadn’t been able to do for months. The idea of it paralyzed me; I thought I had nothing to say and besides that, nothing anyone would care to read. But I’ve realized that the act of putting something on paper, although it might feel personal, often turns out to be universal. And there’s comfort in that, for me and for others who will read it and realize that you don’t need to be so embarrassed or ashamed of feeling lonely. And maybe, if we all realize we’re lonely, maybe we won’t feel like we’re left out of some great secret of how to get through life avoiding it. Perhaps that’s not the mission at all; perhaps loneliness is just another of our body’s guideposts, leading us to what feels right and true. To relationships and the self that we were meant for. And perhaps sometimes, we’re lonely because in sitting with ourselves, we are faced with the challenge of staring ourselves down and realizing the distance between who we are and who we wanted to be.

So cheers to loneliness - my mission in the next few weeks and months will be to try and let it be my guide.