the lonely little girl in me
on growing up lonely, feeling unwanted and invisible.
the thing about growing up as a lonely little girl is that the loneliness makes a home inside you. it creeps into your cells and devoids them of love. it empties your heart by sucking out everything inside it. it leaves you hollow, an empty vessel— wanting, wanting, wanting.
growing up i always had this feeling that i was unwanted. among friends and family, i always felt invisible. i was there physically— laughing at jokes and listening to stories— but really, i was very far away. looking at all those people, observing them from a distance in silence. seeing them make others laugh, make quick remarks, just effortlessly fitting in. having something that felt so unreachable to me. i felt as if i wasn’t interesting enough. could never be. like having an invisible boundary, one that i had always stood on the other side of— alone. one that I couldn’t cross no matter how much i wanted to.
i can still feel my heart sink down in my chest when i feel undesired. and the thing about feeling undesired and unseen is that you start to question— what’s wrong with me? why am i too much? why am i never enough? how much space can i really take up? how do i make myself digestible? how small would they like me? how little?
being the least wanted friend in every friend group. being the only one who didn’t get invited to hang out. and if i was invited, being there, taking up space physically. but never in people’s minds.
“oh her? yeah she’s okay. too quiet. doesn’t make a difference if she’s there or not. more of a convenience than anything else, really.”
the lonely little girl in me was starved all her life, denied of love and companionship. hunger lives in the pit of her stomach and desire resides between her teeth. longing rests bitterly on her tongue. yearning weaves itself around her ribs.
all she wants is someone to love her— completely, willingly, without pulling away. so she doesn’t have to claw at it, or be afraid that they might snatch it from her. she would feed on it violently until she can feel herself get full for the first time. until she can’t take it anymore. just once. at night, she dreams of such a time and then gets disgusted by the immensity for her yearning. so she denies she’s hungry at all. afraid that if she admits she wants it, she will have to admit that she can’t have it.
"Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love."
— Fiona Apple
as i stepped into adulthood, i found better friends. people who liked me and liked being around me. it still feels surreal sometimes when a friend tells me they missed me at a party i couldn’t make it to. when someone remembers some little detail they could’ve conveniently forgotten, but chose to not to.
The thing about growing up feeling lonely is that even though you grow up and the loneliness shrinks, it still remains inside you. and it makes it’s existence known at the most unexpected moments. a wave of detachment hitting in the middle of nowhere. a feeling of not belonging anywhere— familiar, because it has crawled inside your bones and stitched itself with them. a harsh reminder that no matter what you turn into from the outside, on the inside you are still—and always will be— a lonely little girl.
thank you for reading.
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Thank you for this. I’m having a no good, very bad birthday today and reading this has been so very comforting. It’s hard to face the loneliness on a day when you’re putting on a brave face, and reassuring yourself that you’ve accomplished so much in the past 365 days, and that surely the next 365 will be awesome even if you don’t believe a word of it. Having it articulated so concisely on the page here helps immensely. I wish I could give you a hug and tell you how beautiful and worthy you are. To tell you that your existence and ability to put into words these feelings is a blessing to the rest of us lonely girls. On days when you are feeling lonely please remember you aren’t alone.
Sometimes you read something and feel as if some aspect of your existence, written down in exactly the way you used to feel it once, exists for someone else too. Is there no original human experience after all?