thoughts and the loneliness that they bring

the thoughts come and come but they don’t go.

It’s truly like breathing. You breathe without thinking about it, until at some point you randomly think about breathing and then you are aware of your breathing.

Similarly, I feel like I think about everything all the time, and only do I realize that not everyone does this if it become apparent in some random interaction.

I feel like it produces a kind of mental loneliness that I have never really conquered because there doesn’t seem to be much remedy. This feeling that the world of thoughts and dreams that I have built over my life is only ever going to have a population of one. Only one person will see the sky and ground the way it exists in my head. Only one person will care about the goals I have for myself, or the projects I created in pursuit of those goals.

I confess I used to have a lot of imaginary friends. Now I only have one, but I don’t really think about them often. The imaginary friends, albeit usually “friend”, engage with my musings in the ways I wanted to be engaged with. They fulfilled me in ways that I never feel like I’ve completely gotten from my friends, partners, or family. They give me a sense of familial stability. Or he or she did at least.

Now I don’t think about her often but every so often I’ll have a dream where she returns and over a cup of tea we muse together about the vicissitudes of life. She disagrees with me when she likes, and we debate about things, our back and forth flows like wine from a glass. It doesn’t have to be harmonious thoughts all the time, we are still different people. Certainly different in that I’m real and she isn’t. But I find comfort in that we chat with different perspectives so respectfully, almost as if we understand each other deeply through our talks.

These dreams probably are describing a lifestyle that I would like to lead. More than anything though, they describe a camaraderie of feeling that I wish to have more often. The feeling of being a creator and dreamer and simultaneously not being the only one.

It pains me how much I talk about this, because it doesn’t truly matter all that much to me, but then why else would I dream about it so much. I have no other explanation but that I’m honestly just lonely in my thoughts. Lonely in the way I perceive the world, lonely when I feel like I’m the only one with my projects, lonely when I feel like people seem to look at me from afar and like me or not, rather than look at me like their creative equal.

I wish I could open my mind to the world, but more often than not, I am afraid of being the only one speaking.

Throughout my life, I’ve locked myself to the pages of notebooks, to various online blogs like this one, even to blogs that I’ve coded and hosted myself. I write and write like as if it will manifest the things I yearn for into existence. Instead it’s like putting notes up on a wall that nobody sees. Who’s to say anything more than thoughtfulness and catharsis will come from stuff like this. I’ve resigned to the notion that most people honestly don’t care, and that sometimes I need to not care in order to fit in.

I know you might be thinking, no, you should care! while reading that sentence. But therein lies the loneliness: people always telling me to fearlessly trek on in my own quest once I talk about it. Nobody wants to join me.

It’s this incongruousness of support that I have felt everywhere all the time. Everyone wants to read your work and thoughts. Nobody seems to know what to write with you, or to want to write with you. It’s like the hypocrisy of consumption without inspiration. I don’t want my work to just give people an experience, I want to inspire others. Maybe then I’ll have some camaraderie to join my ranks of listless warriors of thought.

Originally published on Substack. View the source version ↗