The thin line between being lonely and losing yourself

Carine Ru
Carine Ru
Nov 5 · 3 min read

I have been suffering from depression and anxiety for a long time now. In the last few months I have been going through a particularly rough patch, which has meant a lot of difficult changes in my life overall. I had to quit pretty much anything I was doing at the time, at least for a while. I paused University, I quit my job and I stopped seeing or talking to friends for longer than I’d like to admit.

As I’ve been trying to figure things out and choosing from a bunch of options of treatment or jobs I could do without being overwhelmed, I’ve kind of lived in limbo.

One thing I’ve noticed whilst going through the motions is an overwhelmingly strong feeling of needing company. You see, in the last few years I have been a mostly independent person, who didn’t mind being alone and to be honest, kind of welcomed it.

With things like social anxiety and literally getting physically drained just by spending time with people, it’s fairly easy to just not want that much company to begin with.
But being forced to be by yourself might change the way you feel about being social in general. In my case I was forced to be alone because I simply couldn’t find the strength to leave my own room.

The simplest things can seem overwhelming when you’re in a state of mind, which makes most room for darkness.

The thing is, I am not lonely per se. I do have a boyfriend that takes care of me as much as he can. But as he does have a functioning life and a lot to do, there’s only so much time that he can actually spend with me. And that has meant, that I had gotten into a habit of waiting.

Really, waiting felt like the only thing I was actually doing.
When there really isn’t anything you have real motivation for and - on the other hand - there’s also not much that you need to do at all, you can slip into a state of mind, which kind of just reinforces your depression.

The first thing that might happen and which is also a kind of side effect of depression, is overthinking. But there is something that comes after that. It’s emptiness.

Being alone can enforce the feeling of emptiness, simply because you are not surrounding yourself with anything else than yourself.
After a certain amount of time, it’s just a never-ending cycle of your own thoughts. It’s as if with every turn they get, they become a bit blurrier, a bit more hard to decipher. Until there’s just nothing.

Still, feeling dependent on having people around you to feel a bit more “yourself” or less empty, is probably the right moment to take a second and re-evaluate.

Is being lonely the real problem, or is it your state of mind?

Distraction is a really powerful thing and sometimes it makes you feel like maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem afterall. But in the end, distraction is just another thing that drives a wedge between you and your problems.

Carine Ru

Written by

Carine Ru

I’m a 23 year old student based in Stuttgart, Germany. I study Computer Science and Media and ramble a lot. This is my outlet.

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