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I was isolated growing up.
Isolated in the regular run-of-the-mill homeschooled way. Growing up in rural Canada where everything is a minimum of a 30 minute drive away. Groceries, entertainment, activites, friends - and nothing in between but wheat and sloughs and cows.
Born to people who were not only the youngest child in each of their families, deeply introverted, and whose external social situations also put them in the way of easy ridicule.
It was the sixties, man.
My experience of the world for the first 18 years of my life was through my mother's eyes, primarily. My beliefs were filtered through her opinions, and my actions were dictated by her whims.
On top of that when I was 13 my family moved overseas to facilitate my dad's job. Moved, not to a town, or a an expat compound... but to a vacation village, which we inhabited September - May until I was 18.
We went back to Canada in the summers, dooming me to a cycle of social deprivation and catchup, never getting ahead or making meaningful connections.
None of this is stuff I really tell anyone, anymore. At 26 it's all far enough away that it doesn't come up in my current self synopsis when meeting new friends.
As my world expands, and I meet and love more and more people I'm so aware of how the more people that you meet and interact with the more you have a sense of your own place in the world.
Every time I have a new romance I learn what love is out there for me. Each new experience changes my views on past experiences. What I like and what I don't. The kind of love I can accept, how I want to be treated.
Every time I make a new friend I learn that there really are all kinds of people in the world, and that growing up it's not that there was something wrong with me, it's just that I didn't necessarily vibe with the 10 people I interacted with.
Nov 15, 2024
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I looked different, didn't speak the language, didn't understand well the culture — and every moment I was out in public I felt alone, unknown, and as if I were being mocked. Probably it wasn't true, but that's how it felt.
That season, at the time, was dark and lonely and often painful. It was a stark shock my my system and worldview after having grown up in a small rural town surrounded by people who looked and talked like me.
But quickly after I came back to the USA I was able to see what a gift those nine months had been. The gifts of perspective, of empathy, of knowing the cold, constant pervasiveness sense of not fitting in, of knowing what it is like to be an other have stayed with me and shaped the course of my life.
Jan 26, 2025
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A little personal, but being non-binary, I grew up very dissociated from my body and my time, so I don’t remember a good chunk of my formative years and have retained none of my hobbies. Recently tho, I have been trying to piece myself back together, so I have been spending a lot of time on my own. Another thing about me is that I have crushes everywhere I go, so I spend a lot of time loving others. After breaking-up with an ex that made me feel very neglected qnd unappreciated, I decided that I was going to give myself as much love and attention as I give my crushes and lovers. This has changed me.
I just let myself feel my feelings and get carried away by them. I get myself little treats and flowers, I get myself little treats and gifts. I organize little fun dates/plans for myself where I engage in new hobbies. Small manageable things that don’t feel too overwhelming to learn, like decorating Altoids tins with collage or journaling. By letting myself navigate the world through my feelings, I’ve discovered what I like, dislike, and developed little rituals and habits that I can then tell other about and share.
Social media has helped me that way, surprisingly. I treat my instagram like a scrap book and use it to document my feelings with shitposts and photos; the visual story telling makes me appreciate the little things. Pinterest allows me to collect things I like and develop a taste with no effort and no consequences, and I end up with huge pin boards full of pictures and art I love and that make me feel particular things I can name and explore. This app has been good for that too.
It takes time, love, self-compassion, and trust. Trust that the love others give you is legitimate. Trust that you are liked for a genuine reason. Trust that the mundane is magical by itself, love it for that. Trust that you don’t need to be special to be worthy of love, you can just be a person and that’s really cool <3
Mar 11, 2024
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Honestly my whole life I been by myself, and you might wonder what I mean by that? jajaaj welp, let me tell you a story about me.
i struggled early on life due to my father addictions and violent personality, my mother passed away early on too and I gactually got to live with her until 6-7. After that, all I knew was loneliess, I have a brother but he was very brotherly I would say, because we got a long sometimes and sometimes we don't.
apart from this i got a stepmother, which had child-like personality so we got a long just like kids. she is a very nice person and struggled a lot by my father sides. we all struggled by his side a lot as he is also a narcisistic. everything had to be about him and so on.
i say i been alone, because with my surrondings i was always separeted from the people that truly cared for me and the people that were around didn't really see me, because of this i always had to deal with my emotions by myself and became a very quiet kid. it was awful to put up with shit and always blame it on myself, because that's what everybody is saying.
growing up with very emotionally distant people, always leave you the lonely scar. this is why i always wanted to have friends, but in a weird way jajjaja i was very awkward too and violent. i did a lot of things to impress people or to like them, things like putting down other people, or doing silly things in front of everybody.
all of this has resulted in me needing therapy (and graduating!) and needing people to approve of me. honestly, i can't pin point the thoughts i had when the need to impress taked over me as they were like the usual.
i feel like i been rambling around my loneliness, but that also felt like context. i am now a very different person honestly, but the sadness of not fitting in my family (because i moved out on my own and stopped talking to the rotten ones in my family) and seeing everybody else talking about their mothers and fathers, makes me feel so bad. like i understand that we musn't look to the other persons plate, but when you do and see how empty yours is, is difficult to not go crazy.
i crash out from time to time and i allow myself to do so, becuase is fucking hard. i live on my own by my own means in this ECONOMY, so that just mades everything worse. i hate to see people with parents that actually lookout for them, like no matter what they do they parents will always be there to support them. i hate happy families, and the thing my little self always says in the back when i see this is "why not me?"
2d ago
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and my neighbourhood group is full of photos of them walking around the neighbourhood having a nice time
Jun 8, 2025
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Join a club or take a class! It's funny how chatting with 9 people in real life & clicking with 1 person feels like such a win when I know if I talked to 8 people I don't click with online I would feel soul sucking failure. We're just animals, find a herd.
Jul 3, 2024
Feb 17, 2025