We all belong here.

Feels comfortable but feels distant from everyone you know. Feels like you are on another planet where you live, but there’s no way to celebrate with others. Your loneliness bubble is comfortable but it feels like living on a barren planet.
The “golden orb” [person is holding] is the key to make my way back to civilisation but I don’t know where the lock is.

"I had never experienced true loneliness until the first night I moved to another city, in another state, for university. I was suddenly truly alone. Two thousand kilometres from home. In the dark, I couldn’t hear my dad’s heavy footsteps or my sister slamming doors, only the sound of possums on the roof, or a train horn in the distance.

Days gave no relief. I had the whole day to myself. All twenty four hours to fill. With nobody at the end of it to ask how it was, nobody to share dinner with, to commiserate over my gluggy spaghetti or burnt mince. Dessert of microwaved porridge, the bowl warming my lap.

I met a few people at O-week but these connections led nowhere. And I had a job but it was only weekends in a bar, where no one seemed interested in talking, and so my voice remained silent and unused. The weeks loomed long and large, passing by slowly.

At night, I would stay up late, looking at the lights of the city from my window, wondering what everyone else could possibly be doing.

I had always loved reading; a solitary activity, but I lost this love, and retreated into my own head. I spent a lot of time walking, earphones in, walking to nowhere, doing laps of the block, walking well into the night, returning home in the dark, too exhausted to think about anything except to crawl into bed and listen to the possums on the roof.

It was the loneliest period of my life."

‍

I've always felt different, something not quite right, like I had an invisible barrier between myself and other people. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to fit in. I really wanted to fit in. But I just couldn't quite manage it. A label on my forehead in permanent marker, "I am different". Different is cool in movies and books, it's unique. The quirky unattainable "manic pixie dream girl". But in reality different is isolation, it's loneliness. It's standing at the centre of a room feeling like you're Earth travelling a little too close to the sun but constantly wanting to chase the heat even though sometimes it burns a little too much from embarrassment. I thought Uni would be different, that the more people I meet the more likely it is to find my 'person', to find my planets. But really I just became Pluto, a little too insignificant to be anything at all. Forgotten in a sea of confusion, of other people on the cusp of adulthood trying to find their people too.

My experience of Uni so far is best described by this lyric by the wonderful Mr. Billy Joel, "they're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone".

I often wonder how many people out there feel like me. Maybe if I knew the answer then I wouldn't feel so different, so lonely among others. Maybe I'd feel a little more ok to be me.

‍

I'm alone.
Breathe in.
Breath out.
I'm breathing but the beat keeps rising. Annoyingly.
I see a gap.
I fill it with presence.
To not have presence is to not exist.
Being perceived may instil nerves but not being perceived is a gunshot that slowly unravels the skin that allow you to stand.
In films where the world has ended and only person is alive, are they really living?
Or are they living in hopes they aren't the only ones?
If your action bypasses everyone, who carries it?
No one.
If your memories are not shared, who remembers it?
No one.
Be independent. Be private. Don't overshare.
True.
Third spaces. Community. Interdependence.
More true.
Is it a life without anyone?
It isn't.
I need you as much as I,
Breath in.
Breathe out.
I see someone and I smile.

I moved here in 2023 for university. It had always been a childhood dream to travel overseas for my study, so loneliness was not a concern I had at all. Somehow it still crept up in ways other than simple homesickness. I've been doing better this year.

On my loneliness

it's not the absence of people – of that i am sure. i have always been the one who leaves but i'm disappointed when no one knows who i am. i'm eighteen and i do the whole teenage routine: chop my hair, fly over oceans, rearrange myself to seek out the kind of love i want. Eldest daughter tired of looking after everyone else, blessed victim, cursed god, whatever complex you want. one of the millions of this same exact story. no,

loneliness is not the absence of people.loneliness is the absence of one person. i find myself looking for you everywhere i go. Standing in crowds, spotlight beams, thinking you'd have something to say about this. i'm twenty and I feel like the most difficult thing in the world to understand. you made it look so easy but no one seems to be able to replicate it. i'm scared no one ever will again.

except i'm just twenty one. every year feels like i've aged a decade but there will be morecrowds, more spotlight beams and i'll cut my hair a hundred more times. someone will see me – actually see me – again; new lover or new friend or the bartender at the jazz club. i think i grew into childhood's optimism many of my friends lost but is that a bad thing? i wasted too much of childhood being lonely to do so again in my twenties.