Everyone on the outside gives the same advice "why don't you focus on something else?" "you'll find love when you least expect it" "you have to be happy with yourself first" "why don't you focus on your career?" "why don't you get some hobbies" "you'll never get anyone with that mindset"
There is either a complete blindness to, or worse, a denial of the realities of chronic loneliness. It's easy to dispel advice when you have found love, or at least have no problem finding intimacy. When you are continuously alone, for years at a time, with not so much as hand to hold for even a second, the world is entirely different. There is no consolation or alleviation of the anguish. You, with your wife, and children, have never stepped foot into this world. You have not had to consider with any seriousness, for even a moment, that love may allude some people their entire life. You haven't had to consider whether or not a fulfilling life is possible in that circumstance.
You haven't seen your goodness need to withstand the brutalities of isolation and fight with every last fiber, every single day, to remain. You can pretend that the universe sorts everything out right, ignoring the chronically lonely, just as first worlders ignore the plight of the starving third world. What exactly is being sorted out correctly? Turn your eye, if it is even possible, to the realities of agony that the alone face. Foreveralone is a meme for you, a decade gone by since it's hay day in culture, but for me, it was nothing light or jovial. For me, it was, it is my life. Never a meaningful connection with another, never the fantasies of love and bliss appearing real.
I know you have no answers, that you don't want to consider the ugly reality of my solitude. I know even if you wanted to, you could never understand the damage that has done physically and psychologically to me throughout the years. It's not just the big disappointments, but also the small ones, the ones that were brushed off, but still laid a thorn into me, and now, cumulatively they have left me ensnared, scarred, and hopeless. The memories that should be such minutia, that it would be hard for me to recall them all, let alone ever explain them all, all have ruined me. The anchors I have in my mind - how nearly everywhere I go, every thought I have, somehow is involuntarily connected to someone that I had hoped would share their heart with me. How I look at my boots and think of the time I bought polish for them 6 years ago from a store that is on the corner of the street where they attend Church when they are back visiting their family. How absurd it is to make such a connection between two places, miles apart, with no connection to any one memory. How haunting it is to live everyday with such spontaneous stabbings.
All I wished for was peace, normalcy, to hit developmentally healthy milestones in a somewhat typical timeframe. Instead what I got from life was unanswered questions, endless frustrations, and a decade of Depression. And now hopeless, drifting about, watching every hour, day, month, year, pass by without the Renaissance of my life that I had hoped for, you advise me to just focus on something else, as if I was willingly putting myself through this brutality.
There is either a complete blindness to, or worse, a denial of the realities of chronic loneliness. It's easy to dispel advice when you have found love, or at least have no problem finding intimacy. When you are continuously alone, for years at a time, with not so much as hand to hold for even a second, the world is entirely different. There is no consolation or alleviation of the anguish. You, with your wife, and children, have never stepped foot into this world. You have not had to consider with any seriousness, for even a moment, that love may allude some people their entire life. You haven't had to consider whether or not a fulfilling life is possible in that circumstance.
You haven't seen your goodness need to withstand the brutalities of isolation and fight with every last fiber, every single day, to remain. You can pretend that the universe sorts everything out right, ignoring the chronically lonely, just as first worlders ignore the plight of the starving third world. What exactly is being sorted out correctly? Turn your eye, if it is even possible, to the realities of agony that the alone face. Foreveralone is a meme for you, a decade gone by since it's hay day in culture, but for me, it was nothing light or jovial. For me, it was, it is my life. Never a meaningful connection with another, never the fantasies of love and bliss appearing real.
I know you have no answers, that you don't want to consider the ugly reality of my solitude. I know even if you wanted to, you could never understand the damage that has done physically and psychologically to me throughout the years. It's not just the big disappointments, but also the small ones, the ones that were brushed off, but still laid a thorn into me, and now, cumulatively they have left me ensnared, scarred, and hopeless. The memories that should be such minutia, that it would be hard for me to recall them all, let alone ever explain them all, all have ruined me. The anchors I have in my mind - how nearly everywhere I go, every thought I have, somehow is involuntarily connected to someone that I had hoped would share their heart with me. How I look at my boots and think of the time I bought polish for them 6 years ago from a store that is on the corner of the street where they attend Church when they are back visiting their family. How absurd it is to make such a connection between two places, miles apart, with no connection to any one memory. How haunting it is to live everyday with such spontaneous stabbings.
All I wished for was peace, normalcy, to hit developmentally healthy milestones in a somewhat typical timeframe. Instead what I got from life was unanswered questions, endless frustrations, and a decade of Depression. And now hopeless, drifting about, watching every hour, day, month, year, pass by without the Renaissance of my life that I had hoped for, you advise me to just focus on something else, as if I was willingly putting myself through this brutality.
