Thirty Years of Crowded Loneliness

I lived on three continents. Not as a tourist, not for a few months, for years. Decades. At first, it was thrilling. New streets, new languages, new faces. I learned how to fold myself into different cultures like a chameleon, how to laugh at jokes I didn’t find funny, how to nod when I wanted to scream.

I made friends. Or rather, I collected people. Not because I wanted to, but because the alternative choosing to be alone was treated like a symptom. "You don’t go out? You don’t have friends here? Aren’t you lonely?" As if loneliness were the worst thing that could happen to a person.

But here’s the truth: I was lonelier in crowds than I ever was by myself.

Every dinner party, every coffee meetup, every forced smile in a crowded room I cringed inside. My skin itched with the performance of it all. I craved silence like water. Solitude wasn’t just a preference; it was a relief.

Then came the betrayal. Someone from my own bloodline, a person whose name I’d carried like a prayer dug the knife in deeper than any stranger ever could. The kind of hurt that doesn’t fade. The kind that rewires you. It wasn’t just the act itself; it was the proof. Proof that all those years of twisting myself into shapes for others had been a waste. That the people I’d bled for could turn and laugh while the wound was still fresh.

I used to be kind. The kind of person who’d give you the shirt off their back, who’d apologize for things that weren’t their fault, who’d sit with you in your pain even when it cost them their own peace.

Now? I’m not.

When COVID-19 hit, even the closest friends I had disappeared. I tried to find excuses for them. "They're protecting their families. They're scared. They're overwhelmed." But we were in different states, and none of them bothered to check if I was still breathing. For two, three years, I reached out worried, imagining the worst. They were in high-risk areas, at high-risk ages. I pictured hospitals, ventilators, funerals no one could attend. And then, when they finally answered their phones, when they called back as if no time had passed at all, it was too late. My heart had turned to stone.

But here's the strange gift in all of it: Without them, I had time. Real time. Not scraps stolen between obligations, but wide, open spaces of it. I learned new skills. Picked up hobbies I'd abandoned years ago. Rediscovered the quiet joy of my own company.

And here’s what shocks me: Today, everyone’s screaming about loneliness. About isolation. About the need for connection. But no one talks about the violence of bad connections. The exhaustion of false ones. The way trust, once broken, doesn’t heal, it scars.

I don’t miss people. I miss the person I was before I learned what they could do.

The Lesson (For Those Who Need It):

1. Loneliness isn’t the monster. It’s the price of admission to a world that doesn’t deserve you.

2. Betrayal isn’t an event. It’s an education.

3. Solitude isn’t a failure. It’s a sanctuary.

   
   

You don’t owe anyone your company. Not even an explanation.

Still figuring it out,

Kaia