We all belong here.

I used to think I’d made peace with loneliness. Certainly, I had experienced a great deal of it, always at least on some level.

The typical ‘alone in a crowded room’, fake smiles and faux friendships comprised my early schooling. I learned to de-code social cues, to engineer acceptable reactions and to be present whilst never being truly present. I came to view it as the way I would walk through life - never truly understood - and concluded that I myself was fundamentally defective.

As I grew older, my mental health deteriorated. Friendships eroded and instead my eating disorder took their place. It provided predictability and reliability; always present.

Loneliness itself was a stranger to me - though it was in my presence, I didn’t know it. I was never alone with it - never fully cognisant. Though I was deep in it, I lacked the capacity to recognise this.

My eating disorder felt like friendship deeper than I had ever experienced. It was the only consciousness that fully understood me. It knew intricately the workings of my brain and promised me comfort. It kept me company internally, despite the isolation that engulfed me. It kept me busy as my network switched from peers to carers.

After a long and arduous struggle, my physical health stabilised and I returned to school. I had both the company of my anorexia - still as loud as ever - and also once more had the surface-level friendships that ticked all the boxes.

I was more aware of my bone-deep loneliness. Though, being surrounded by others combined with the ever-present thoughts allowed me to deny it.

When my schooling soon after came to an end, the weak friendships I’d held seemed to dissolve almost instantaneously.

I was left alone with my disordered mind. For some time, it provided enough to hold on to. Such that loneliness was kept at bay. However, I began realising that the companionship offered by this part of myself was an illusion, and one that came at a great cost.

I had felt aspects of it before, but I’m never all together. It was not until then that I truly experienced loneliness through multiple lenses.

Alone in my experience, something that no other soul in the universe could comprehend to its entirety.

Alone by space, trapped in my room by bollards of broken connections.

Fighting my head alone, given my eating disorder no longer provided the same momentary solace.

It is a deep, soul-destroying feeling. A darkness that feels so final. Vulnerability and fragility and grief. Envy and longing for the mateship that others found so freely.

But it also allowed me to realise the need for change. It drove me to search for others like myself and in turn to discover the Lived Experience field. A wonderful, wholesome, welcoming and healing community to whom no explanation was needed.

People who bore scars in the same places. People who ease and still ease my pain. People who had known and overcome deep loneliness

Last year, when I moved into my apartment I felt really alone, I have never been away from home before and come from a family of 6 with me being the oldest. I missed the noise of home, the comfort of knowing someone was always nearby. Even though I decorated, it didn’t feel like mine for a long time. I spent evenings staring at the ceiling, wondering if I made the right choice. It was lonely, but I knew I had to learn to be okay with it. After about a year getting a job and making friends was when I began to feel settled. I now wouldn’t have it any other way

I grew up in Rural NSW, I struggled with my identity and sexuality during my youth. Nobody I knew growing up was accepting or had any education around those topics so I remember most of my childhood as being depressed, anxious and anti social. I moved to Melbourne at 21 years old and it was so hard I didn’t know anybody. I struggled to get a job even though I had a lot of experience, I had no friends here which was hard to make friends because it felt like everyone my age had high school friends and didn’t want to be meeting anyone new. And I didn’t understand things like pronouns or understanding my sexuality which made me feel like an outcast for the first 1.5 years of living here. I was so depressed, isolated and felt alone every time I tried to get into a service it was a long wait like headspace and it gave me anxiety to receive phone calls.
Now I’m finally feeling settled, I understand myself, my identity and sexuality and made some friends that helped me discover things about me and understand them.

Leaving home wasn’t my choice—it was more of a necessity. The decision came after an argument with my mum, one of those tense standoffs that left everything unsaid and a heavy silence hanging between us. She gave me the cold shoulder for days, and even before that, it felt like I was walking on eggshells every day. I didn’t know how to make it better, and honestly, I don’t think she did either.

I didn’t have much support elsewhere. My dad worked FIFO, always away, and my sister… well, she disowned me a while ago (but that's a story for another day). I felt like I was on my own. My friends, who still lived at home, seemed to have these warm, easy relationships with their parents. Must be nice to have supportive families and friends.

At the time, I was dating a guy who lived out of home, and thankfully, I was able to crash at his place for a couple of months. It was a relief, even though I felt guilty about imposing. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome, especially with him and his roommate, so when the time came, I moved out. I found a room in student accommodation. It was cheap, easy to get, and felt like my only option. But it turned out to be a huge mistake.

The house was packed with individual rooms, maybe ten in total, all rented out. It felt like a cash grab more than anything else, but I couldn’t afford a full unit on my own—especially not as a uni student. The housemates were disrespectful, not respecting shared spaces, and it was exhausting dealing with the tension. I couldn’t handle the instability anymore, constantly moving between places, never quite settled. I missed the comfort of feeling like I belonged somewhere.

I tried to make new friends, but everyone was further out, and with all the changes going on in my life, it was hard to keep connections. So, after months of trying to hold it together, I went back to the family home. It wasn’t as bad as before, though. I think my mum had some empty nest syndrome or something because she was a little kinder. It didn’t fix everything, but it was a small relief.

Now, I’m living with my partner in our own unit, with our cat. Things have settled but even with that, there are new challenges, like buying a home. It’s confusing, frustrating, and sometimes, I feel lost again.

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