I have felt lonely since I can remember. It started with ostracization from family and slowly losing friends as friendships fade or are cut off quickly because they can't accept me for who I am.

I find that I don't relate to other people, so going out an meeting new people makes me feel more lonely.

First of all, I'm bisexual so automatically don't belong in either the straight or gay communities. Further complicating this is that I'm in a straight relationship and have never had a same-sex experience (but not entirely from a lack of trying), which makes it difficult to relate to the bisexual community. And because of this lack of experience, ignorant people find my sexuality to be illegitimate. And so I am invalidated as a person and forced to hide who I really am to most people.

Gender identity further ostracizes me from everyone of all identities.

I don't understand women because I think more like a man and I don't get men because I was socialized to be more like a woman socially/emotionally.

After losing my best friend of about a decade over her opinion of my sexuality, I really don't trust people. We must never have actually been friends and she just put up with me and met my socializing needs out of pity or charity over the whole time.

I was in college for a long time and grad school especially is the loneliest place to be. I had to quit my first full-time job because it didn't make enough money so I've been starting new experiences and switching groups of people all the time. I meet plenty of people. Almost none of them stay in my life long enough to build any kind of connection.

And for those that I might be able to connect to, there are the trust issues of whether or not I want to invest time in something that will just end so abruptly and painfully as the relationship with my former best friend. One conversation destroyed a decade-long friendship.

And there was a second best friend in college that as soon as she graduated we never really talked again. It's both our faults I'm sure, but I can't help but think it's because of my sexuality and as the horrible person I am, I became attracted to her.

So, I either do not find my tribe AT ALL or if I think I might have actually found it, life removes me from that environment. I'm old enough now that if I haven't found my tribe at this point, I'm not going to.

I'm not sure how capable I am at connecting deeply with other people anyway because the bonds in my family were so fragile that I had to protect myself by not really attaching.

So I really ache for a family. Especially a father. And siblings because I never got to know my brother. I have this emptiness inside that it seems no amount of love or accomplishment or adoration etc. will ever fill.

So what am I supposed to do? Just forget about the feelings and continue to ignore my needs because there's nothing to fulfill them. I have to find people I can relate to and trust and who understand me before I can begin to feel less lonely.

So I guess the question is, how do you trick your mind into being less lonely? How do you feel good even though your basic human needs never get met? How do you feel less like a fraud when you don't fill the mold you're supposed to fill? I'm always accused of not knowing who I am when really it's I know who I am but I know I won't get accepted for that so I keep it to myself and try to fit in as best as I can. Which I guess is fake?