This Is What I Hope You Understand About Loneliness

I spent so much time not understanding how someone could feel so lonely while being surrounded by all these people in their lives. I never quite understood how sometimes people could be in the midst of a group of friends or surrounded by family members all the time and still feel so damn lonely. I have mistaken loneliness for only the physical kind; I didn’t understand that there were so many more aspects to it.

I realized that you could spend most of your time with people and still not be able to shake the feeling of loneliness away. I didn’t understand that sometimes what causes that awful feeling could be the fact that you feel that no one around you truly understands you or what you are going through. It could be a lack of connection between you and others. It could be feeling like an outsider and that you don’t fit in, even if you’re supposed to be part of a certain group.

Loneliness is feeling like no one understands you. It’s like you’re all alone from the inside—no one gets the way you think or the way you see things. It’s feeling like someone can’t relate to you or get your thoughts. It’s an awful feeling when you don’t have someone you can talk to who will truly relate to what you’re saying. No matter how many people are in your life, if none of them truly understand you, then you will end up feeling lonely. And that’s one of the uttermost forms of loneliness.

This feeling ends most of the time when you meet someone who tells you that they have gone through what you’ve been going through and understand your struggle. It ends when you truly connect with someone, when you feel like someone can deeply understand your thoughts and share them. This is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world—to finally be able to find someone who actually gets you.

Sometimes you might find yourself feeling so much less lonely in a group of strangers than the closest people to you, mainly because you might have found in them what you have been lacking in all your other relationships—someone who can deeply connect to you.

Sometimes you just need to be with someone who is where you are at this stage of your life. Sometimes you need someone who understands your struggle. Sometimes you just need someone who’s been through what you’ve been through so that you’re more comfortable sharing with them what’s going on in your mind. And sometimes you just need someone who can relate to your thoughts so deeply so that they make you feel less alone in your head, like you’re not the only one who thinks or feels this way.

It’s beautiful when you know that somewhere in this world has had the very same thoughts that crossed your mind and that someone has felt what you have been feeling. Knowing that you’re not the only one out there who’s like that, that you are not alone, is such a reassuring feeling that we all deserve to feel.