We all belong here.

Looking towards the unknown possibility as a chance to reinvent self.
Hiding self, expression and personality, wanting to break out but hesitant because of unfamiliarity.
The building blocks represent a chance to start new.
Who do I want to be?
Where do I want to be?
What do I want to be?

This piece was written during a time when I felt completely disconnected from the life that I thought I’d be living by now.

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When I turned 23,
the world around me sped up, degrees
finished, careers started,
paths unfolding with names like
teacher, nurse, manager,
certified, employed, promoted.
People around me were finding their rhythmposting
updates that sounded like progress,
moving forward with certainty,
direction, pride.
But me?
I was surrounded by unfinished sentences,
half-attempts, loose ends.
A future written in maybes
and question marks.
I was stuck.
Job to job.
Course to course.
Searching for something
that felt like me.
But nothing did.
I was searching for meaning
in ruins.
In the aftermath of trauma
that clung to me like a second skin.
The world expected me to know-
Who I was.
What I wanted.
Where I was going.
But I didn't.
I had no map.
No compass.
Not even a vague idea
of what I liked,
what I stood for,
who I was beyond survival.
And in the space where identity should have lived,
loneliness took root.
It didn't live in silence,
it lived in the quiet ache
of scrolling through lives that moved forward
while mine stood still.
It lived in the pretending.
Pretending I was okay.
Pretending I had direction.
Pretending I didn't notice
how far behind I felt.
It was the feeling of being lost
in a world where everyone else
seemed to know the way.
Alone in the ocean,
no lighthouse in sight.
But it's hard to say it out loud-
Does speaking it
make it more real?
Does admitting it
draw attention?
Will people finally see
just how far behind I amand
laugh,
or leave?
What if saying "I'm lonely"
only makes the people disappear faster?
What if saying “I’m lonely”
makes me disappear faster?
But
I'm still here.
Even if I don't have a title,
a house,
or a five-year plan.
I have breath.
I have softness.
And a quiet kind of strength
that comes from surviving
when no one else sees the storm.
I'm still here.
And maybe that's something.
Maybe being lost
is just the beginning
of being found.

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At 23, I watched the people around me find their paths—graduating, starting careers, building lives with structure and direction—while I was just trying to hold myself together. I’d dropped out of uni, changed jobs more times than I could count, and felt like I was constantly searching for something solid to stand on. But nothing felt like it fit.

I wasn’t just unsure of my future—I was unsure of myself. I didn’t know what I liked, what I believed in, or who I was beyond the survival mode I’d lived in for years. That’s where the loneliness really crept in. Not just being physically alone, but feeling like no one could see the version of me that was struggling to keep up. Like if I admitted I was lost, everyone would pull away even faster.

Writing this helped me make sense of that foggy, stuck space. It was a way of reassuring myself: I may not have everything figured out, but I’m still here. I’m still trying. And that counts for something.

If anyone else feels the same—uncertain, behind, like they’re floating through their twenties without a map—I hope this is a reminder that you’re truly not alone.

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This poem was written when I started university - I was trying to make new friends and became stuck in a cycle of becoming an onlooker to established connections. The third. It made me feel like I was broken, and reflect on the people who used to be around me who weren't my friends but they were familiar. It made me think that loneliness can become so much stronger when you feel it around other people.

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Do you ever see a bond that two other people have,
And start to really miss the friends that you never really had,
Before your voice, oh so quietly, faded behind the rain,
While you watch your happiness drip, dripping down the drain.

Behind my work, there’s no glory,
Just a girl with tired eyes,
I want to tell you the full story,
Sick of all the made-up lies,

But I can’t tell you the truth,
No, I have to improvise,
‘cause then you’ll see the mess who wants to be up in the sky,

And you’ll just let me go,
You all left me alone,
Can’t you see I wasn’t built to be loved?

I was built on my own.

I can’t have a connection,
My emotions skin and bone,
I am burnt and raw and ugly,
Chiselled out of broken stone,

You can’t put me back together,
But don’t just leave me alone.

Please don’t let me go.

I wanted to submit a voice recording to this project as I feel like I could share my most authentic and vulnerable self, without planning it out. In saying this, I do ramble a bit. The recording goes for about 10 minutes and I hope you find it helpful in your journey.
- Love anonymous

The world symbolises being apart from my family who lives overseas. The houses represent how, in our culture, loneliness is manufactured, there’s a lack of community.
There’s also nowhere to go where you don’t need to spend money, its hard to form community.
The collage also reflects not having connections to rely on. I live in share houses, where finding strangers to live with is a necessity. I also included my cat in there too.