My Own Loneliness

Loneliness is something I’ve struggled with for…majority of my life. I think to an extent everyone feels lonely from time to time, but the intensity differs. Mine can get, uhh, bad. Since I was in third grade, my friends have either moved away, decided to not be my friend anymore, developed romantic feelings for me that they couldn’t separate from our friendship, stopped hanging out with me when I stopped playing shows (I used to organize music shows and play them too), didn’t want to deal with my mind obstacles anymore, or I had put too much on them to take care of me. A therapist at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Audre Lorde Health Program, Women’s Primary Care in West Hollywood explained that these consistent and repetitive events created a developmental trauma, and that is why the feeling of loneliness and loss for me can be unbearable. My fear of saying the phrase “best friend” out loud is synonymous to the intense fear Hogwarts wizards and witches have of saying “Voldemort” – except that instead of fearing that Voldemort will appear, I fear that my best friend will disappear. Anybody that called me their “best friend” I knew had signed our friendship death warrant.