I don’t know when loneliness became so familiar.
It didn’t come all at once.
It wasn’t like the movies, where someone walks alone in the rain looking sad and poetic.
It came slowly — little by little — slipping into my life without making a sound.
The clearest feeling comes at night.
Sometimes I’m clearly tired, but I don’t want to sleep.
Not because I’m not exhausted, but because sleep feels like disappearing.
I just sit on the edge of my bed, letting random songs play in the background.
The screen on my phone lights up and dims again.
Sometimes, hours go by and no one messages me.
I’m not really expecting anyone to.
But it still stings a little, seeing nothing.
Like maybe the world wouldn’t even notice if I wasn’t here.
During the day, I can laugh. I can make jokes.
I can act like everything’s fine.
But at night, when it’s quiet, I start to wonder:
“Do I really have any close friends?”
“Am I just a background character in everyone else’s life?”
“While everyone keeps moving forward, did I get left behind?”
I’ve tried reaching out.
But people are busy.
And maybe they don’t mean to ignore me.
Maybe that one message — “Hey, you there?” — doesn’t mean much to them.
But it means something to me.
So when they don’t reply, or say “Let’s talk later” and never do,
I notice.
I started saving my words for myself.
I write them in my phone notes, on scraps of paper, in my head.
Sometimes I don’t even save what I write.
It’s enough that I said it, even if no one heard.
I don’t completely hate being alone.
Loneliness makes me honest with myself.
It stops me from pretending.
I don’t have to impress anyone, or force a smile, or show up to things I don’t care about.
Still… sometimes I wish someone would care when I say, “I’m feeling kind of off.”
I wish they wouldn’t reply, “You’re overthinking it.”
Sometimes I post something quiet and meaningless, and I wonder if someone might just ask, “Hey, are you okay?”
Maybe then, I’d feel like I wasn’t just floating by unnoticed.
I know I’m not the only one who feels like this.
But until I cross paths with the others like me,
I guess I’ll keep living with this feeling.
Anyway… nothing special happened today.
I just remembered this feeling again and wanted to write it down.
Not to make anyone relate.
Not to ask for comfort.
Just to say—
Tonight, it’s me. Alone. Again.
