Could It Really Have Been That Bad?

Sometimes it hits me like a wave — the raw truth of it all:

My life has been so fucking lonely.

So lonely, in fact, that a part of me doesn’t believe it could have really been that bad.
That inner voice creeps in and says:

“Surely you’re exaggerating.”
“Other people had it worse.”
“You’re just being dramatic.”

But that’s not truth.
That’s my inner critic — trained by a childhood where my reality was dismissed or denied.
That’s the voice I built to survive a world that didn’t see me.

Because if I admitted how bad it actually was…
If I let the full weight of that loneliness land…
I don’t know if I could’ve coped.

So I gaslit myself.
Minimised.
Tried to make it sound manageable.
Tried to believe that maybe it was just me — too sensitive, too needy, too emotional.

But I wasn’t.

I was just a child who needed love, and didn’t get it.
A teenager who needed connection, and was left alone.
A young adult who accepted breadcrumbs because I thought that was all I was worth.
And now, as a man, I’m finally letting it in.

The truth is:
It was that bad.
It was that lonely.
And just because I survived it with a smile on my face, doesn’t mean it didn’t leave damage behind.

I think the reason I’m so tired lately — so exhausted at a level sleep can’t fix — is because I’m finally processing the emotional weight of a life lived in isolation.

And when I get small glimpses of what it’s like to feel seen — in therapy, in counselling training — my body realises just how much it’s missed.
And the grief floods in.

Not because I’m broken.
But because I’m healing.

So when that voice says, “Could it really have been that bad?”
I’m learning to say back:

“Yes. And it’s okay to feel how much it hurt.”

Because I won’t abandon myself anymore — not to make other people comfortable, and not to protect an old story that never served me.

This was my life.
And now, finally, I get to live the next part differently.

---