Issue 01 - Loneliness

felt like everyone had friends, while I
was just floating from group to group.
I felt not only disconnected from my
outer world, but from my inner world
as well. I didn’t understand how I, such
an outgoing person who was talking to
people and making “friends,” still felt
completely and utterly alone. Not only
that, I didn’t even have the language to
describe what was happening to me. I
was exhausted by constantly reaching
out to people to try to garner some sort
of social connection, especially when it
seemed like I was the only one who was
really having to try.
“I felt not only disconnected from
my outer world, but from my inner
world as well. I didn’t understand
how I, such an outgoing person who
was talking to people and making
“friends,” still felt completely and
utterly alone. “
How did everyone already have
friends? Was everyone just
automatically best friends with their
roommate? Was I missing something?
Did I just peak in high school? Maybe
I’m not as social as I thought I was. I
had all of these people around me but
no idea how to connect with them. And
even if I did—how was I going to know
if they actually liked me?
Like I mentioned, I’m an extrovert, so
making friends should be easy for me,
right? Wrong. While I do enjoy getting
to know people, I have a hard time
making deep connections with people
past a surface level. I have a guarded
approach to social connection, even
when it doesn’t seem like I do when a
person is talking to me. I won’t lie—I
have been burned in the past by close
friends. I have plenty of trauma from
my middle school years (I was severely
bullied), and that accounts for the way
I approach social connection. While I
believe these experiences made me
a stronger, more empathetic person,
those years still affect me (trauma, am I
right?). Even after joining a sorority—a
supposed network of women with
whom I was to feel immediately
connected—everything still felt forced. I
was intensely uncomfortable, paranoid
that I wasn’t doing enough, that no one
really liked me, that I was a weirdo. For
at least six months it felt like I had the
word desperate tattooed across my
forehead.
The thing about loneliness is it can
trigger a cycle of connection or
disconnection, depending on our
perception of making friends and
reaching out to people. People who are
lonely generally have fixed beliefs about
themselves and their ability to form
friendships in general; this could be in
part related to the fact that society has
ingrained in us this idea that friendship
should be “easy and effortless,” that if
you have to try at a friendship it
probably isn’t worth it or going to work
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