I feel lonely.
Not in the cue dramatic piano, tears in the rain, no one texts me back kind of way.
Lonely in the quiet, almost polite way.
The kind that shows up even when you’re not physically alone.
Even when someone’s sitting right next to you.
Even when they say they love you.
It’s a quiet ache. A vacuum you start to carry around inside your chest.
I’ve felt that loneliness most sharply in relationships, which sounds ironic – tragic, even – until you realize it’s one of the most common kinds.
It’s the loneliness of having your needs misunderstood, or worse, unnoticed.
It’s the kind that creeps in through cracks you almost pretend not to see.
Cracks you try to patch with half-conversations and distracted sex and sweeping things under the rug so often, the rug becomes your relationship.
I’ve lived both sides of this avoidance:
I’ve ignored the cracks.
And I’ve tried to plaster over them so hard I ended up erasing myself in the process.
Let me explain by way of coffee. Because, yes, I’m that person.
Every morning, I make coffee.
Especially when I’m staying in my dad’s rural hometown – the kind of place where the air still smells clean and the dogs still bark like it matters.
There’s peace in the routine: the birds, the crickets, the cigarette I shouldn’t be lighting but do anyway, and of course – my Charlie Brown Halloween mug.
One morning, I noticed a crack in the mug. Small. Barely visible.
I rinsed it like I always do (OCD says hi), filled it with coffee, and since nothing leaked, I figured: it’s fine.
I mean, why ruin something that still mostly works?
But here’s the thing: I kept using it.
Every morning. Same mug. Same crack.
And eventually, the crack deepened. It spidered across the handle and one day, mid-pour, the mug gave out. My coffee spilled everywhere.
Relationships are like that mug.
You notice something – maybe it’s small. A sharp comment. A look. A silence that stretches too long.
You let it slide. Because it didn’t “ruin” anything.
You tell yourself it’s not worth bringing up. That you’re being too sensitive. That you don’t want to start a fight.
And so the crack stays.
And you keep pouring yourself into something that can’t hold you.
Over time, those cracks widen.
It becomes harder to pretend you’re not hurt.
That you’re not slowly disappearing inside the effort of holding things together.
The things that used to make you feel loved now make you feel small.
You start walking on eggshells inside your own life.
And when you don’t name what’s breaking, the relationship isn’t the only thing that suffers.
You do.
You stop recognizing your own reflection.
Your self-worth becomes a casualty of your silence.
That kind of quiet deterioration took me places I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I drank to disappear.
Not out of celebration, not even rebellion – just sheer exhaustion.
Because it felt easier to erase myself chemically than to admit I was disappearing emotionally.
I’ll write more about that later. But what I can say now is this:
I ended up in that place because I was terrified of being left.
So I chose to abandon myself instead.
Let them stay. Let me vanish.
But if you’re scared of being alone, ask yourself: Why?
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth –
You can be in a relationship and still feel lonelier than you ever did single.
You can share a bed and still feel like a ghost.
Aloneness and loneliness aren’t the same.
Being alone can actually be the place where you come back to yourself.
Where you remember what you want, what you need, and what you’ll never tolerate again.
It’s not easy. But it’s honest.
I used to say, “I hate being alone with my thoughts.”
Because yeah, it’s uncomfortable when you’ve spent years muting them.
But now? I’ll never say that again.
I’m not afraid of being alone.
I’m afraid of being unheard while pretending everything’s fine.
So if you’re in that in-between space – where you’re not alone but you feel invisible – please hear me:
You deserve more than survival.
You deserve to pour your coffee into something that holds.
And you don’t have to crack to keep anyone.
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