So I'm told we're in a loneliness epidemic. I've felt lonely for most of my life, truth be told, and apparently everyone's feeling it these days.

I guess the pandemic had everyone indoors for a while. I know I forgot how to socialize despite being a rather outgoing person. Can't imagine how rough it had to be for folks who weren't as far along on their social anxiety journey as I was. Then again, that doesn't seem to be what everyone is talking about.

I have a lot of friends in my life, personally. I belong to a few communities and even built one or two for myself. I often take for granted how easy it is for me to meet people, and I know that it is a challenge for some. I keep maybe three close friends here in town and a few that I keep up with from my homelands, and sometimes that feels like too many. But I remember well the days when I felt like I'd kill for a friend, days when I couldn't speak to anyone and when I did it was just all the wrong words.

I felt trapped in a way I couldn't describe even to myself. I recognize it well when I see it in others. But I was always able to overcome it when I had somewhere to go. When I was younger, it was the various game stores where I was embroiled in the tumult that comes with being among other fans of Warhammer and DnD. Later I had college clubs, and all the drama that comes with stuffing a bunch of late adolescents in a room together. These days I've got the goth clubs and the LARPs and of course my dear River Goblins who I mostly met through the aforementioned clubs and some tabletop RPG groups that formed through them.

And yet I'm still pretty lonely. Like I said, I've felt that most of my life. I've had a few partners here and there, I've been really lucky to meet some amazing people and have our journeys intertwined for a while. And been unlucky here and there, too. I do miss having someone I was that close to, but the last few years have been more about getting to know me.

I don't think there's a way I can make that sound less cheesy.

My Mom's pretty lonely these days. She spent her entire life with my Dad, more than five decades with him almost every day. Him dying brought a grief into her heart that will never leave, now. It's how it goes.

She doesn't have any friends. She can't keep many people close due to some of her mental illnesses and general personality. God knows it's a Task for me to stay in her life. Still, I think she's had a lot of bad luck meeting people who only want to use her and become very cruel when she won't let them.

But y'know, she was lonely before, too. I remember big chunks of my childhood where she was tortured with how lonely she felt with just me and my Dad. She took it out on everyone who was close to her, and it just reinforced her own personal hell in a feedback loop of suffering.

While she's learned to be more content now, as well as cautious, she still wishes she had friends, and all anyone will tell her is that her only recourse is to get married again, something she doesn't want to entertain. She wishes only for a friend, and she doesn't seem to know how to gain them.

One of the biggest lessons I've struggled to learn in this life is how I can't force other people to be my ideal version of them, no matter how happy it might make them. It's painful to watch her struggle, and challenging to constantly defend my boundaries. But we're both better off with my borders closely regulated.

My Dad was pretty solitary. He always said he preferred to keep as few people close to him as was possible. He would always say that he only needed my Mom and his kids.

Except sometimes he would meet some people and be so happy to have them around. Guys from work, dudes from his Cisco Networking classes. People he bought weed from.

And ultimately they'd eventually move on fairly quickly. My Dad had a habit of self-aggrandizing in order to satisfy his own trauma, and it was often off-putting. Other times he would just lose interest after the novelty of a new person wore off.

He very much was not socialized to have friends, but in the end he did seem pretty happy to just have his corner of the world and my Mom.

I haven't always been this graceful. I've had times of my life where I reacted not much differently than my Mom at feeling like I had nobody in my life. There are times I've yearned for entirely too much from other people, and the absence of this fictional something or other drove me to madness. I don't think I've ever indulged in overtly misogynist behavior but I wasn't much better than a lot of the men crying out for whatever it is they wish women would give them.

Sometimes certain men see my loneliness and reach out to me. They tell me that they understand and they can help me attain whatever it is I seek for myself. I'd hope by now you know how much it pisses me off when someone tries to sell me something.

I had a dear friend many years ago whom I met in Arizona and coincidentally lived not too far from Columbus when I moved here. I considered him a trusted companion from a period of my life when I had very few of those.

He was always a little bit of an odd person, but after his longtime girlfriend broke up with him (because she felt very lonely in the life they'd made) he became rather unhinged.

In the summer of 2014 I had gotten close to someone and then broke it off. It was a mutual situation that was best for everyone involved but it still left me rather sad, and I went to my friend for some support. We went to an all night coffee shop that used to be near OSU's campus, and he shared with me his take on the situation.

He stated to me that women were the problem, that feminism had rotted the traditional values of family from women's minds and reduced them to words I'd rather not repeat. I challenged him on these beliefs, going as far as to declare myself a feminist, but he doubled down with the most disgusting metaphor I have ever heard from a person about people:

"Picture a woman as a bird. You want a nice, sexy hawk right? But a hawk is hard to keep. Anyone can keep a fat turkey, but you know how you keep a hawk? You make it dependent on you for food, water, and shelter."

I broke down crying in the coffee shop. To see someone I trusted saying the most dehumanizing shit I could imagine was too much for me. And also I was a little pissed off that he was making my time of sadness into an opportunity for him to ramble about his wildly toxic worldview. Seeing my tears, he put his hand on my shoulder and softened his voice: "I know, dude. I'm sorry. Women are fucking awful, aren't they?" And all I could do was bawl some more at how insane he had become.

I never spoke to him again after that night. I often wonder if I should have tried to help him.

Loneliness can definitely drive you insane. I've had times of my life where I felt like my own heartbeat would drive me mad. I think that our civilization as it stands does encourage loneliness in order to sell anything from material self-empowerment to fascism.

Don't get me wrong, I love buying stuff. I'll have to post about one of my many collections of kick ass stuff sometime. But like I said before, I hate it when someone tries to sell me something.

So lately I've been on my own for the most part, except for when I'm not. I meet people constantly, and now and then I even feel like I might've met a new friend or two. I always try to try new things, and I'm lucky in that people tend to enjoy speaking to me if I can get out of my head long enough to say anything real.

The loneliness isn't so painful anymore. The people I allow close to me are tried and true, and are people I know I can be safe around. When one of us loses our minds to the various ways the world drains our sanity, we're usually able to help each other climb out of the hole without having to compromise our boundaries.

I find myself happier to be on my own than I ever thought possible. I come home to my cat and I call a friend if I need to, or go to one of the many places around me where lonely strangers can do whatever it is we do in groups. Usually listening to loud music, if you're curious.

There's this song lyric I always wished embodied me, and I think while learning along the lonesome road I have achieved it:

"They call us lonely when we're really just alone."

But also, y'know, I'm not exactly alone.