No ideal environment. No space where the inside of them matches the outside world.

They have friends, they're sociable, intelligent, and even charming. But no matter where they go, nothing feels like "home," and no one feels like "their people." It's not just about physical distance; something inside them never quite aligns with what's around them.

They wait in vain for the matching click of recognition—the moment their deepest interior need is met by the external world.

They're not exiles, not precisely. No one's cast them out. But they carry the ache of never quite fitting, of always feeling a little off-center.

They feel like strange punctuation marks—people recognize their shape but can't quite figure out the rules.

Loneliness for them isn't about the absence of people; it's about the absence of connection in the presence of people that feels most acute. They might not be alone at a holiday dinner, but they're alone in their experience of their aloneness.

They live with the loneliness that becomes, over time, ambient noise. The background soundtrack to life. Often, it feels like living on a different frequency from everyone else.

They might be in a room where friends talk about the regular things they all do together—poker night, a dinner club, something—and no one thinks to include them, even though they're right there. No one says why. But they feel it. They become used to exclusion, even if they don't understand it.

They don't feel entirely misunderstood—they feel half-understood by almost everyone.

Mostly, they feel forgotten.

They don’t struggle with the nature of their identity, but with the existential nature of existence.

They often doubt their own reality. Maybe they’re just difficult. Or their needs are too specific. They assume this loneliness is their fault.

But really, it’s a matter of ontology. Of the way culture, community, and family have become siloed. Their psyche mourns for a world that no longer remains; they long for something they never experienced.

Our culture lacks the language for this. Because our culture created it.

So, how do they keep going?

By stopping.

They stop expecting what they want and start accepting what is.

They practice wanting what they have by imagining life without their lovely apartment, their working refrigerator, a closet filled with clothes they've deemed "unwearable."

They stop blaming themselves for being different, for needing more depth, more time, and more truth than most people offer. They stop looking to feel at home in the world and work on feeling at home within themselves.

They embrace the loneliness as an opportunity to become their most creative and non-conformist self.

They grieve what they didn't get. The invitation. The inclusion. The family. The ease of other people. They grieve the feeling of incompatibility that’s lived inside them like an absorbed twin.

They try new ways of taking part in the world. They walk in new directions, go to different neighborhoods, become radically unafraid to do things on their own.

They start painting, drawing, working out, connecting with the thing itself instead of waiting for people.

They learn to live with the loneliness—not as a burden, but as a creative force. Because the longer they sit with this unease, the closer they get to this truth: the wholeness they long for has been in them all along.

Until next week, I will remain…