Loneliness Can Suck The Life Out Of You
But you don't need to let it win.
I have led a very solitary life. Growing up in a single parent household with a thoroughly dysfunctional family never really taught me how to build great relationships.
Most of my relatives cut off from each other when they disagreed over anything. That means our family gatherings became more few and far between as I reached my teen years.
My efforts to build good relationships were also stunted by the fact that my family didn’t have a car.
Of course, it didn't help that I am autistic, though I wouldn’t be diagnosed until I was almost 34.
And it certainly didn’t help that my adolescence was occupied with daily injections and monthly testing to treat precocious puberty and PCOS.
My life was solitary, complicated, and stressful from a very young age.
I was an extremely lonely child.
My mother and my sister say I had imaginary friends. I’ve never been able to remember having any, but if it’s true I assume it’s because I was such a lonely kid.
There was a great deal of sadness in my life which I never knew how to verbalize or even get through with other people:
