We all belong here.

I am currently living out on a farm kilometres away from everything, and I haven't seen many of my friends in over six months. I was supposed to start uni this year, but life happened, and I have been forced to stay home. I never see anyone other than my family, and even then, they are always out working. I've tried really hard to get a job and something to do, but I cannot find anything that will take me, a chronically ill teenager with pretty much no life experience. I just feel so isolated from everything, and so lonely. Honestly though, this isn't a new experience. I've felt like that since I started primary school. I just feel like I never fit in anywhere, and just so alone. I miss my friends, and I just want to leave my house, and do something for a change, with my friends.

At the start of this year I discovered my first ever partner, who I was with for 18 months, was cheating on me. She was my world - and I devoted so much time and energy to growing into a better person for her, and myself.

Since then it has been a battle, a struggle between the sides of my brain - to try and pull myself together after having half of who I am suddenly removed. Like a tapestry with every 2nd row removed, I felt frayed and worn.

Trying to unravel those threads, and weave back together *me* is something I am still working on. While I know what I value, and care about - it feels like my identity has shifted to something I have yet to truly understand or know.

Loneliness is this ever present cloud that lingers. Sometimes it rains. Hard. It feels like I am drowning with how quickly the rain comes down, and I have to weather the storm anyway I know how. Other times, it lingers in the distance. A soft drizzle, not enough to draw my focus away from what I am doing - but enough to keep me constantly reminded of the fact I am now alone.

I've tried my hardest to use this time in my life to grow as much as I can. To become a better person from the pain of a first love failed. It would be so easy to let myself spiral into the self-fulfilling cycles of beating myself up, the could-haves, should-have-beens, and whatnot.

As my life shifts drastically from what it once was, and I face a future with no one by my side - it is hard to remain optimistic. As a man, I am not asked or checked up on. The few people in my life don't ask how I am doing. I don't blame them, but it still hurts.

I face this time in my life alone for the most part. Not so much a support network but an emergency fall-back. That's a hard thing to face, the fact that despite your best efforts and what you would do for others - those in your life just don't reach out. Not out of maliciousness, but just due to what seems to be the norm for us.

In the meantime - I write songs. I journal. Putting the constant buzz of thoughts down into words allows me to make more sense of them, and simultaneously I hope that maybe someone else reads them and can draw some help or solidarity from it.

I had gotten used to being alone. I had moved far away from those who I would have once considered friends.
I knew they were never real, just there out of circumstance.

I realised I never belonged.

Growing out of my teens, being alone gave me time to reflect on all the pain I had endured from people. Forced to continue living in the shackles of the traumatic past, never letting me walk free.

In a way, loneliness has been bittersweet, allowing me to grow and search for all the missing pieces that were forced to be silent. The love I never felt, the trust I never had, the safety I was never given.

I have been forced to carry everything alone, forced me to keep myself going even when I was crumbling, but I feel more lost then ever, like I am too much for people, that I feel too much.

Maybe that’s why
I’ll always be alone.

The more I search for them,
the friends I yearn for
that choose me,
that aren’t afraid to show love,
that put in the same effort and care…
they may never come.
And I continue to drown in that thought of loneliness everyday.

Since starting uni, I've met so many amazing people and formed great connections with others. I feel that I have so many friends, yet still feel alone. How many of them can I hang out with spontaneously? How many of them can I be vulnerable with? How many people can I truly be myself around? And not just people who want to hang out with me because I'm 'fun'. I'm around so many people and yet I'm lonelier than ever.

Harboured feelings
Two years of unspoken feelings
Beneath my porcelain heart
Our unrequited love lingering in the air
Deeply enamoured by your enigma… grace, intelligence, and beauty
Found the sweet nectar of tranquillity
In another woman's embrace
But we fell right down, the rabbit hole
Now trapped in a world where our love is forbidden
Hostility fills the air
Oh,the melancholy
Surround myself with a glimpse of illusions
To prevent my heart from the lingering pain
Our connection that transcends the ordinary
Love bound into an intoxicating spell.

(This is the piece I am currently working on. It's not finished hehe. It's about how my nuerodiversity and experiences affected the way I seek relationships. How one person could turn into my whole world. In my experience, I believe it is a common experience for neurodivergent individuals.)