I'm feeling particularly lonely tonight and sorry for emotional nature of this post. I feel like I spent so many years of my life and made so many sacrifices to keep my family happy but also to get their approval, especially mom's. They did not seem particularly interested in me getting what I wanted or needed, and worse yet I also chose to forget about myself. And worst of all, I've come to the conclusion, with the help of my therapist, that not only what I did was not place or role, but also it did not make any difference at the end of the day. I felt devastated.

So when I had gone for therapy I had forgotten myself to the point I literally didn't know what I wanted to study, what kind of work I want to do, what types of friends I'd like in my life. My family was my project, my parents and my siblings, them I knew quite well. But here I am in my 30s and I feel totally alienated from the world. Many old friends are married or have careers, they have a large circle of friends, they have money, own a house, and then there's me. I feel like I've been living outside dimensions of time for the last couple of decades, when mental illness and family problems forced me to get sidelined.

I think sometimes during therapy I would feel especially lonely but I would not admit to it, but the way I would deal with it is I would forget about myself and try to be what my therapist wanted me to be. When I was younger I was quite religious and I would do what God wanted me to do, to the point of obsession. Being me never felt safe, was never enough for anybody, including myself. My relationships, including one with God, were covered with fear, fear of rejection, fear of being seen as "bad" or "wrong." I would not feel contained. I felt alone.

If I stopped having relations, I'd feel even more alone. Because every relationship, including with a new therapist, was another chance at this ideal of not being alone, of finding someone who really connected with me and made me feel totally safe. Yet all hopes were eventually disappointed. And I would quickly go back to being what people wanted me to be.

I remember one particularly painful discussion with a therapist about God, and she said maybe there is no personal God but God being universe itself with everything inside it, almost this idea of visible life as holy. I told her this makes me feel exceptionally lonely and then I started to cry. I told her if I talk to a frog, will he comfort me? Will a tree contain me? I said the cloud rains and the lion eats the zebra and the volcano erupts and none of these things have anything to do with me, and in reality are more likely to harm me than comfort me. Real world is not a Disney movie, it's cold and unforgiving and alone. I'm a stranger in a strange land.

Sorry if this sounds weird and needy but tonight I even wondered what if I never posted here again, would anybody know I was gone, would anybody care, some faceless name no longer posting, nobody would know, nobody would care, nobody would remember....