lonely
feeling sad because you are alone or disconnected
I think loneliness is really overlooked yet deeply misunderstood. Being lonely isn’t just being physically alone. I think it’s not having anyone or anything in your life. Or feeling like you don’t. You can be surrounded by people but still feel eerily alone. Human connection is so integral to our being that we, if desperate enough, can latch onto anything, even if its actively hurting us. I feel like men constantly complain about being alone. I’m grateful to be a woman, and to be friends with people who shower me with love and support. I think being lonely comes when you cannot be vulnerable. If you never show anyone who you are, how are they supposed to know you? Sometimes being lonely is not having anyone know you. I think deep down we all want to be known by someone, to be understood.
“More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn’t alone.”
James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“I nod, sip my tea, thinking about how hard it is to really truly connect with another human being.”
Suzanne Scanlon, Promising Young Women
“You’re addicted to loneliness and desperation. It’s the strongest emotion you’ve ever known, so your subconscious tells you that it’s your destiny.”
“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
Charles Bukowski
“Great loneliness, profound isolation, a cataclysmic, overpowering sense of being misunderstood. When does that kind of deep feeling just stop? Where does it go?”
Julie Buntin, Marlena
“It’s all right
Unless you’re either lonely or under attack.
That strange effortful
Repositioning of yourself. Laundry, shopping,
Hours, the telephone- unless misinformed-
Only ever ringing for you, if it ever does.
The night- yours to decide,
Among drink, or books, or lying there.
On your back, or curled up.
An embarrassment of poverty.”
Michael Hofmann, Night
