The Loneliness After Opening Up

Sometimes, I think it couldn’t be worse — emotionally speaking.
No friends. No partner. No real, sustained love across my life.

I used to pretend that wasn’t true.
Now I see it. And it’s crushing.

Because I’ve started to let myself feel. I’ve opened up in therapy. I’ve started to show myself in group counselling. And oddly — painfully — that’s when the grief came.

Not because those spaces are unsafe… but because they are.
And for the first time, my body is beginning to realise just how much I never had.

I’ve never truly been loved.

Not by my mother.
Not in friendship.
Not in partnership.
Just tiny glimmers, here and there — mostly from people trained to offer it. Therapists. Counsellors. People who hold space professionally.

And now that I know what it feels like to be met, even a little…
I see the void that came before. The gap where love should have been.
And I’m exhausted. Not just tired — deeply drained. As if my whole nervous system is catching up to the truth it’s spent a lifetime avoiding.

And yeah — I’m eating half a lemon drizzle cake.
Not because I’m hungry, but because I need something to hold me.
Something soft. Something sweet. Something that doesn’t abandon me.

I don’t think people realise what it does to a person — to go unloved for decades, and then be judged for how that pain shows up.
I was desperate for connection. And instead of care, I was often mocked. Dismissed. Seen as less. Like my loneliness made me defective.

But it didn’t. It made me human.

I acted out not because I was flawed — but because I was starved.
Starved of love. Starved of reflection. Starved of safety.

And now that I’m finally learning what those things feel like…
Now that I feel a sense of love in my training group…
I realise how much I’ve missed.

And it breaks me.

Not in a way that destroys me.
But in a way that reveals me.
In a way that says, “Yes, this is grief. But you’re finally feeling it now. That’s how it heals.”

So I’ll sit here. Full of lemon cake. Full of sadness.
Not because I’m failing.
But because I’m finally beginning to grieve the life I never got —
And maybe, slowly, open the door to one I can still create.

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