On occasion I’m confronted by my own self-made hell, my own machinations manifested in a lonesome existence. The issue isn’t really the solitude, because I genuinely thrive in my own company, the issue is the consequences of that solitude.

Often times I’m able to sort of ignore the reality of my situation by distracting myself by means of either doing something, like watching a series, playing a game, reading, or just thinking about other things, but then, in a moment of silence, it comes crashing into me at high velocity.

I’m smacked in the face by it. My reality is fucking bleek.

I’ve had a day like that today, where I’m forced to recognize just how utterly and absurdly alone I am. Not forced by an external actor, but rather just by my own emotional state of being. I feel sad, basically.

I’m always constantly aware of it, but it seldom makes itself felt like it did today. Like I have no one, not a soul. Everything fucking hurts today but I have nobody I can share my pain with, no one who cares beyond the most casual empathy you’d get seeing a stranger cry on the bus. I barely kept it together today, almost suffered a full breakdown in public. My resilience kept me afloat, which I’m grateful for, but at the same time shouldn’t I cry? Why can’t I just cry?

Like I have nobody I can even send a text to for some comfort, or a pick-me-up, or just someone to share a funny meme I saw with. I’m taking in water but I have no way of keeping myself dry. I haven’t had a genuine friend in such a long time, it feels like I’m just not of this world. Most times it doesn’t bother me, I’m still able to soldier on, but today I just can’t. I feel it in the pit of my heart. A sort of heaviness, or rather perhaps the lack of it. There’s a massive hole left gaping open unable to be filled, and I’m just walking around with it.

As I said previously, I can often paper over the cracks, that’s my default way of life, but some days it’s blown away exposing my empty and blistering core. And it hurts badly. It’s as if I’m suddenly unable to ride my bike, unable to really connect with people, unable to function as I usually do. As if all memories and experiences of a thing I’ve done a thousand times is erased and I feel like I’m doing it for the first time again. I get nervous, uncertainty hits like a brick through the window.

Fucking hell, what’s the matter with me? I want to connect with people but it’s as if the people I want to connect with aren’t on this plane of existence. A whole culture erased and removed, and I’m forced to deal with people I don’t recognize or I don’t understand. I don’t wanna wear this fake persona, it tears into me, and I’m left so fucking exhausted by it, but if I let myself be myself I don’t know how others will react.

The worst part of my reality is realizing just how much of a stranger I am, even to myself. A huge and barren landscape I’ve never explored because I fear what I’ll find on the way. More than anything I wish I just had a single person I could ask for reassurance or comfort, who I could reach out to in order to know how they felt about me. That’s the only sort of objective answer I’ll get, not that I’ll rely completely on their interpretation of me, but at least it’d be an answer to the question I’ve asked all my life that’s given from someone other than me.

“who am I?”