The individual attempts to separate himself, to individuate, to affirm his autonomy, to go forward, to fulfill his potential. Yet there comes a time when he develops fear in the face of life. Individuation, emergence, or affirmation of specialness, are not duty-free: they entail a fearful, lonely sense of unprotectedness- a sense that the individual assuages by reversing direction: one goes “backward,” relinquishes individuation, finds comfort in fusing, in dissolving oneself, in giving oneself up to one another. Yet the comfort is unstable because this alternative evokes fear also- the fear of death: relinquishment, stagnation, and finally, inorganicity. Between these two poles of fear, life fear and death fear, the individual shuttles throughout life.
+ existential + psychotherapy + death + fear + life + specialness + failure + protection + comfort + potential + time + individual + independent + unstable + separate + lonely
We are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world’s ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.
+ alone + isolated + lonely + ridicule + world + life + death + depression + loneliness + screaming + empty + dark + tenderness + despair + capote
Drop upon drop, silence falls. It forms on the roof of the mind and falls into pools beneath. For ever alone, alone, alone - hear silence fall and sweep its rings to the farthest edges. Gorged and replete, solid with middle-aged content, I, whom loneliness destroys, let silence fall, drop by drop.
+ silence + falls + depression + lonely + gorge + drop + loneliness + alone + virginia woolf
When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.
More and more I found myself at a loss for words and didn’t want to hear other people talking either. Their conversations seemed false and empty. I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.
+ empty + false + superficial + depression + anxiety + alone + lonely + sea + ocean + words + talking + truth + lies
When I was young I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with, I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer. I didn’t easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led lonely life.
+ lonely + boundary + distance + alone + depression + isolation + anxiety + eating disorder + closeness + people + relationship + passion + books + life
Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.
+ Fake + life + shallow + meaning + suburbs + materialistic + purpose + matters + disappointing + lonely + alone + bored
I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.
+ lost + lonely + generation + belong + alone + comfortable
People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.
I want to be alone and I want people to notice me — both at the same time.
I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.
lonely.
I feel like I must be the loneliest person in the world.
+ personal + eating disorder + grief + lonely + frustrated + disappointed
The hungry feeling and lonely feeling merged until it was hard to tell them apart.
The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely”.
+ exceptional + gifted + special + different + alone + lonely + intelligent + creative
