I was doing just fine being alone after 2021 which was probably the darkest period of my life, but I got through it on my own. I wasn’t lonely, just alone, and those are two different things that people don’t always realize. Being alone is intentional beacuse it gave me silence, control, and room to breathe. I didn’t have to explain myself or be emotionally available all the time. I slowly got used to it and at some point, it even felt normal. People around me didn’t really understand that tho. Because some looked confused and others felt sorry for me like something bad happened or something is missing in my life. But I never felt like I was lacking anything. I wasn’t missing a person, I wasn’t chasing connection, and I wasn’t waiting for someone to fix me.
That way of living lasted for years. I learned how to care about people without really connecting to them or get too attached to them. I listened, I tried to understand, and I even showed up when needed, but there was always a distance. I wasn’t being cold, I guess I'm just kinda guarded?
Emotional detachment became normal for me, almost automatic, and for a long time, it worked.
It really did. Crazy right? right.. crazy indeed
Everything changed when I met this one person. Without realizing it, I started being myself around him. I didn’t feel the need to hide my darker side or pretend parts of my past didn’t exist. For the first time in a long time (outside of my mother and the friends I grew up with), I genuinely cared about someone like this. He saw me as I am, not the version I usually show to other people and I saw him the same way. He felt like the older brother I never had, someone I could trust, lean on, and feel understood by. Somewhere along the way, he became someone who truly mattered to me. I don't even know how.
Now... when I’m on my own, everything feels different. The kind of loneliness I remember from 2021 (the one I truly believed I had already survived) quietly finds its way back. It still surprises me every time. I never thought I’d feel this again. Not because my life suddenly lacks of something, but because now I know what it feels like to be truly understood. Don't get me wrong, I feel blessed, I really am.
Thank God for bringing us together and for letting me experience a connection this real. But at the same time, it also scares me. The idea of depending on someone, of having a person to miss, of realizing that the silence now carries a name and a face. Let me ask you something, could you imagine being so used to standing on your own and suddenly knowing how it feels not to? Because I do now. Once you’ve felt that kind of connection, being alone is no longer just solitude for me, it becomes loneliness, and I’m still trying to figure out what that means for me.
You all know I’m a cinephile, right? So lately I’ve been watching Dexter. Looking back at season one, I feel like I’m only starting to understand what Dexter really feels. Not the killing or butchering people stuff, obviously. But that constant need to hide parts of yourself just to seem normal around other people. It hits different too now everytime I rewatch any scenes where Brian is with Dexter. Brian accepts Dexter in a way no one else does, he doesn’t need explanations for his actions, he doesn’t pressure him to change, and he doesn’t demand him to be normal. Brian is just as messed up as Dexter, and he sees him as he is. Watching that, I finally get Dexter when he loses Brian. Once someone knows the parts of you that you usually keep hidden, being alone stops feeling good.
Well.. I just hope I can still enjoy my own company like I did before and that part of me who enjoy being alone without feeling lonely can come back anytime soon, so I can feel whole again.
