LIFE SUCKS

Why do I feel alone?

I am 18 and am living at home, going to community college. I don't know what I want to do with my life, so I'm undeclared. I still don't have my license, only a permit. I'm unemployed. I have a great group of friends and an awesome boyfriend. But I still feel alone.

In the past, I wanted to have very close friends and be a part of a group. I wanted to have a good relationship with a boyfriend and a great home life. So I strived for this, and ending up revealing personal information to the wrong people in an attempt to make them like me. Those people made judgements and then decided to share my innermost secrets with the public. This caused most of my other friends to turn away from me.

Since this incident, it has been hard for me to express myself to the people I'm supposed to be close to. I feel like if I reveal personal things to them, they'll reject me. So I tell them things that are only a watered-down version of what I'm actually thinking or feeling. I'm terribly afraid of driving people away, so even though I now have, through some trick of fate, what I always wanted, I'm too scared to really let them close. I have friends who live nearby who I hardly ever see because I don't want to annoy them or bother them, in case spending time with me is too awkward or boring or strange to them. I don't believe them when they tell me otherwise. And when we are together, I feel distant, like I shouldn't be there.


Expressing myself is a struggle. Even when I do have the guts to disclose something truly personal about myself, I feel it wasn't worth it, because I either feel they didn't take into account how personal it was, or I regret telling them for fear they'll tell someone else. It simply is not fulfilling. And when I truly need to say something, I hesitate. I just went through an entire hour and a half long conversation with my boyfriend without once mentioning the fact that I'm currently feeling a crushing sense of aloneness and a lack of purpose with no motivation or ambition for the future.

Whenever we're together, all my negative feelings are covered up, and all I feel is happy that we're together. But we see each other only on the weekends, due to the distance between where we both live and a lack of a driver's license on both our parts. So all week long I don't hear from him much, because I've got school and he's got work, and he doesn't like to text. We talk on the phone sometimes, but at the end of the day he's tired and I usually have homework. And on days like today, when he's feeling angry because of work and I'm feeling terrible for no particular reason, I end the conversation feeling like I just annoyed him for an hour and a half.

I have other friends, but there's no getting around it- my boyfriend is my best friend. He really is. He doesn't understand me the best, mostly because of how closed-off I am, but he appreciates me the most. You'd think that having that, to any degree, would make me feel better. But no. I just feel alone. I feel stuck between home and school, stuck with my thoughts, stuck with a past that still makes itself present, a present that feels stagnant, and disappointing prospects for the future.

There's no reason why I should feel alone! Even if I don't hear from him as often as I'd like, I have a boyfriend. Even though I never see them, I still have friends. I could change that! But I don't. I sit here, hiding, waiting for someone to know I'm upset, and fix the problem. I just feel alone, and it's all my fault.