I Never Wanted to Be Alone
A journal entry exploring how early isolation shapes a lifetime.
Preface: This is a journal entry reflecting upon social isolation and its impacts. It spans my social history from early childhood to the present and is pieced into sections for readability.
My purpose in sharing this is to show how social isolation can begin in early childhood and worsen over time, leading to lasting consequences. While writing this has helped me, I hope it may also help others better understand this topic or make them feel seen if they have experienced similar situations themselves.
Content Warning: Social isolation, depression, suicidal ideation
I’ve always found social interactions difficult. I kept myself at a distance from everyone I met.
It wasn’t until high school that I realized no one really knew me. I was walking down the hall with my friends, and they were guessing what they’d each do as adults.
I was mostly quiet, just listening. Being a passive observer was normal for me.
Eventually, I got curious enough to ask what they thought I’d do.
They laughed. “You’ll be the first one to get married and pregnant. You’ll so be a housewife.”
They laughed again, like the answer was obvious or maybe even a little pathetic.
Blushing, I asked why they thought that about me.
I can’t remember exactly what they said, but it boiled down to: “I don’t know. Because you’re so religious, I guess?”
That’s when I realized they didn’t know me, not a single real thing about me.
The idea of becoming a deeply religious, traditional wife was absurd to me. I wanted to be a scientist and a writer. I wanted to travel the world. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted kids. I wasn’t even sure I wanted a husband at all. I had a huge crush on a girl friend, and I was trying to figure out what that meant about me.
But my friends knew none of this.
I had played the part of a withdrawn religious girl so well that no one knew the real me. The masks I wore had overtaken my entire identity.
I’m sure someone, at some point in my childhood, tried to get to know me, but I shut them out. I clammed up anytime someone tried to talk to me, refusing to say anything true. The truth was dangerous and painful. They couldn’t hear it.
And at some point, the people around me must’ve… given up.
For my friends, I was a girl from school. Some of them had known me since early childhood; others met me in our preteens. Outside of birthdays, school, and band, we didn’t do much together.
As I got older, this distance grew. By high school, they invited each other to places, but not me. I don’t blame them—for most of them, I was little more than an acquaintance.
But they were everything to me, even if I didn’t let them in.
I looked forward to seeing them at school, games, and concerts. Because I didn’t have anyone else. I wasn’t going out on the weekends or evenings to do anything with friends. And by the time high school rolled around, I wasn’t even spending time with family.
I was always alone. It was worse then, but it wasn’t new.
I want to step back and give an overview of my social development—or lack thereof—because until recently, I didn’t realize how unusual it was.
Breaking it down also helps me understand why I struggle socially today.
Elementary School
As early as I can remember, I was a loner. Looking back, it makes sense. If you have a child who is experiencing trauma at home, it’s not uncommon for them to be withdrawn.
For most of my elementary school years, I was deeply isolated. I don’t remember eating with anyone in the cafeteria on a regular basis. When recess came, I usually sat alone at the edge of the playground instead of joining in.
My teachers often filled the role of friends. They talked to me, sometimes sitting with me at lunch or recess. When I was little, I proudly considered myself a teacher’s pet because they gave me so much attention. I realize now that my loneliness must have been obvious, and they were trying to intervene.
I was teased often by other kids, too. This was bullying, even if I didn’t register it at the time. Some kids calling me a nerd, a hunchback, or mocked for the pencil callus on my finger felt like nothing. I was experiencing far worse elsewhere, and I couldn’t let school become another place of pain. So, I blocked it out.
I played soccer briefly as a young child—maybe half a season. I only remember one game. I ignored the ball and splashed around in a mud puddle instead.
I didn’t do any other extracurricular activities or clubs. After school, I spent my evenings at my aunts’ or grandparents’, then went home. I didn’t go anywhere else. I didn’t have playdates or parties. I don’t know if I wasn’t invited or if I just wasn’t allowed.
Either way, I spent the overwhelming majority of my time alone, and when I wasn’t, I was desperately following a relative around. At our house, that relative was usually my older brother. I was so close to him when I was little that I thought we were twins.
Family Isolation
The rest of my family felt distant, too. I may have been physically near my grandparents and aunts, but only one ever really talked to me. I was a puppy they led around—more like a pet than a person. Most of this silence was generational and cultural. In our family, talking wasn’t normal. It was almost taboo.
One aunt was different. She tried to teach me things. I remember I once spilled the flour while she was showing me how to make biscuits. I cried because I thought I was going to get in trouble. She was gentle, helped me clean up, and we continued making biscuits. It was such a simple moment, but it meant more to me than she probably realized.
I was isolated from my family, too. There were family members I wasn’t even allowed to know. I don’t know why.
Subtle language told me I didn’t fully belong.
They said “my family” instead of “our family,” as if I weren’t included. I believe they didn’t realize they spoke this way. But intentional or not, the damage was the same: I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere because no family was “my” family. Family was “theirs,” and I was someone apart.
Birthday Parties
My birthday has never felt like anything special to me. Even writing this section makes me wince, like I am being too petty or too much. I understand this is trauma talking, which means I need to write it anyway.
When I was very little, I had one large birthday party. It was a slumber party, and it went poorly. A girl got upset that I was the only one getting presents. Her parents came to get her and took all the balloons with them. I never had a party like that again.
I can’t say I never had another birthday party, but they were always small. Usually just family or a few friends with a simple meal at home. Some years, I didn’t have one at all. Even now, my birthday doesn’t mean much to me. I haven’t truly celebrated it since I was a teen.
Sometimes, I’ll buy myself a cake or a special meal, and even that feels like too much. A little critic inside of me says I don’t deserve to want anything more. As if making the day special would somehow make me a bad person.
A Childhood Friend
Even though I was isolated, I had one friend in elementary school I really treasured. I don’t remember spending much time with her at school, but we would often visit each other’s houses. Being around her family, I started to understand that my home life wasn’t typical.
When I tried to ask my parents why our family seemed different, I was given a string of excuses. In the end, they said that we were the normal ones, and my friend’s family wasn’t just strange, it was wrong and bad.
Whether coincidental or intentional, I visited my friend’s house less over time, and she came to mine more.
Visits to my house were different. I masked. I performed. My friend recalls the memories with fondness, but for me, this time is fuzzy or missing. The clearest memories for me are those at her house, where I felt safe.
Middle School
When I moved on to middle school, my friend and I stopped visiting one another. I don’t remember why.
I’ve mentioned this before, but my middle school years are a blank. I know I made new friends at that time, but I don’t remember how. I think it may have been through band. I joined it in the sixth grade.
At some point, I stopped riding the bus. I’m not sure why. My family started driving me to and from school, but my brother didn’t ride with us. He had a social life with friends, sports, and clubs. When he was at home, he still included me, but he was usually gone or had friends visiting. He was no longer my twin, but I still knew he cared about me.
I spent most of my time riding my horse, writing, or wandering around my dad’s factory, piecing together wooden puppets. Always alone. I have snapshots of doing these things, but no recallable memories. If I visited with friends, I don’t remember it, not even as snapshots.
Band was the only social activity I ever joined, and whether intentional or not, every hobby I was steered toward kept me at home, like piano and vocal lessons. I wanted to try other extracurriculars, but I wasn’t allowed. Again, I don’t know why.
I don't know why for a lot of things.
A Party and a Not-Party
I remember one birthday party: the first slumber party I’d ever been invited to. Maybe I’d been invited to a regular party before that, but I can’t recall it.
Before we went to sleep, we played a game, pretending to summon demons. It was a strange moment to feel sad.
Afterward, we grabbed blankets and pillows and made little sleeping spots on the floor. I set up behind a couch so no one could see me. Then, I pulled my blanket over my head and cried. All because I’d been invited and included, even if I was still hiding.
The only other social interaction I remember from my middle school years wasn’t a good one. We were out for recess, which was spent on this awful stretch of road behind the building.
A boy came up to me and gave me a folded slip of paper. His buddies were snickering nearby. I opened it to see an invitation to his birthday party.
I held it for just a few seconds before he snatched it back out of my hands. He laughed at me and said he would never invite someone like me. He said he’d rather throw it away than invite me—and then he did. He wadded it up and tossed it in the trash while his buddies laughed.
I wasn’t upset by this at the time. Just confused. I didn’t understand why he would invite me in the first place. No one ever invited me, and we weren’t friends. The laughter hurt, though. I could feel that. So I turned away and kept walking until I couldn’t hear them anymore.
High School
By the time I started high school, I had found a friend group. This is where my memories become clearer again.
In the first week of ninth grade, my dad and brother died. It changed everything for me, especially how I connected with people.
The week before they died, my brother had a talk with me. He told me he knew I “had it rough” and promised to help me fit in and make friends. That never happened.
Losing him was one of the most painful things I have experienced. He was the only one who knew me, and it sometimes felt like he was the only one who cared. And then he was gone.
My Friend Group
I tried to cling to my friend group, but it changed that first week of ninth grade. Looking back, I’ve realized that they were more “school friends” than close friends. And over time, that dynamic fell apart.
Most of that was my fault.
I was already withdrawn, but after losing my dad and brother, I pulled away even more. It wasn’t just grief. There were other things going on, but I couldn’t tell anyone.
I leaned into my masks and pretended to be someone else. Being me felt unsafe, and I was always afraid.
I also wasn’t kind.
I played the part of a one-dimensional religious stereotype, and when my mouth opened, it was usually with a joke at someone else’s expense. I’d become callous, repeating a harmful internal mantra of “If it doesn’t kill you, you’re fine.”
It shaped how I treated others. I was bitter, in pain, and thought that most people’s problems were insignificant because I compared them to my own.
Some of it could be chalked up to teenage behavior, but a lot of it came from slowly realizing how much I’d already survived. I felt like I was being punished. Losing my dad and brother wasn’t even the worst thing that had happened to me. It was just another bad event after a lifetime of bad events, starting before I can even remember.
I regret my teenage behavior and how I treated people. I was lashing out. That doesn’t excuse it. But understanding where it came from helped me grow and become a better person.
Thankfully, I didn’t stay that way for long. But by the time I realized how awful my behavior had been and wanted to change, I was utterly alone.
My friend group didn’t know me, and some of them had been hurt by me. They were friends with each other, and I was just a tolerance in their orbit.
Complete Isolation
By late high school, I had become an outsider to the entire community. Due to grief and discomfort, even adults ignored me.
I didn’t go out. I had a car by then, so transportation wasn’t the issue. I just had nowhere to go and no one to go with. Sometimes, I’d tag along to a group outing after band concerts or practices. That was it. I wasn’t invited anywhere, and I didn’t invite anyone, either.
On most days, I drove around after school, trying to avoid going home. I started avoiding school, too. I skipped it so much that I got suspended multiple times. School officials called me into disciplinary meetings and threatened to expel me.
But those meetings felt good in a strange sense because it was the only time anyone paid attention to me. The only time I felt like my existence was acknowledged was when I was being punished.
I realize now I was effectively being disciplined for being in pain and for being abandoned. No one tried to figure out why I was skipping school or why my grades were tanking. I was just punished.
Like that would somehow “fix” me.
I don’t think my friends had any idea what was happening, either. Did they know I was suspended? Did they even notice I was gone?
I did try to talk to someone once—the school counselor. I took everything I had to do that. Afterward, they refused to talk to me again and avoided me.
Being ignored by them destroyed me. Everything spiraled. I didn’t try to talk to anyone else. It felt too dangerous, and speaking once was hard enough. My reward for being strong was silence, and I wasn’t strong enough to speak again until last year.
Bonds Lost or Never Made
In my senior year, I began wondering if my friends were actually my friends anymore. I felt maybe I deserved for them to abandon me. I had lashed out and never opened up.
A few moments made it painfully clear what our dynamic really was. I’m not sure if we were ever close, or if I just destroyed what we once had.
One incident happened in the bathroom while we were changing for marching band. I complained about my short torso.
A girl I considered one of my closest friends looked at me and laughed, telling me, “You don’t have a short torso. You’re just fat.” She said more than this, but I didn't hear it. I felt like I was going to pass out. She and my other close friend laughed and left the bathroom.
They didn’t know what wound they were poking—or what it would cause.
Another time, some guy was talking to two of my friends after a football game. The band was packing up, and my friends and I were all standing together. I thought the guy was talking to all three of us. So, I tried to say something. I can’t remember what.
The guy told me to shut up. I tried to ask why he would say that, and he told me, “Because I don’t like you.”
After that exchange, while my two friends were giggling, I asked, “Why don’t you like me?”
No anger. Nothing about his rudeness. No comments about anything else. That is all I asked. All I could think about was how I must’ve done something wrong and how I needed to correct myself. If he had told me to bark like a dog, I would’ve obeyed.
He said, “I just don’t like you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I shut up and froze. He turned back to my two friends, and they continued their conversation like nothing had happened. He asked them if they wanted to get food, and they accepted. They left together. Not one of them looked back. I still didn’t move. I just stood there, mute.
Graduation
High school graduation was, for me, the epitome of this isolation. There was a tradition where the graduates’ families would rush the field after the ceremony.
When the time came, I looked around, expecting to see someone. I didn’t. I waited, stepping aside as families pushed past. Eventually, I realized no one was coming for me. Out of 125 graduates, I was the only one alone.
I saw my friends surrounded by their families. They saw me by myself. No one said a word. No one acknowledged it. To stand alone in a field filled with hundreds of people celebrating with loved ones… it did not feel like reality.
After graduation, with no school or band to hold us together, I lost contact with my friend group. I haven’t spoken to most of them since I was eighteen.
The Culmination
I didn’t go to college right after high school. I started working at a gas station diner. My only social interaction was with customers who chatted while they ate. I didn’t know how to carry on a conversation, but I smiled and tried.
I still do that. I smile and try.
I fell into a routine: work, then home. Nothing in between. I was completely isolated, traumatized, and depressed.
By this point, my hometown had finally gotten internet access, and I had started forming friendships online. They kept me alive.
After a year into that routine, I tried to kill myself. I’d struggled with suicidal ideation for years. One night, I ended up on a phone call with an online friend while another contacted poison control. They didn’t even know where I lived, and I refused to go to the hospital. They told me what I needed to do, and they stayed on the phone with me, even when I was unconscious.
No one offline ever knew this happened. For weeks afterward, people said I looked sick. But I never got medical treatment. I never admitted what I did. I hid it, and I hid it well. Only recently have I realized the physical effects might still be with me.
For years, I didn’t even call this a suicide attempt. Not getting treatment and no one ever finding out made it easy to pretend it was something else. Just a bad night. A stupid decision that didn’t mean anything.
But I wanted to die that night, even if the method was ineffective. That decision was a consequence of untreated trauma and lifelong social isolation. And the only reason I kept any connection to the world and didn’t try again was because of the online friends who saved me.
College
In time, those online friendships became in-person ones. They helped me work through enough until I no longer wanted to die. Since we were the same age, I eventually moved to their city and attended their college to be with them.
For two beautiful years, I had a group of friends who knew me. I didn’t hide. They knew most of my secrets. I didn’t pretend to be someone else anymore. For once, I was just… me.
I got invited—not because I was a tag-along, but because they wanted me there. I had a social life. I had a romantic life. I felt whole.
For reasons I won’t get into here, it didn’t last. Losing them destroyed me. It felt like my heart was cut from me. I lost myself. The masks returned. I became a gaming addict. I stopped going outside.
I was alone again.
Except this time, I knew what I had lost. I knew what I was missing, and the isolation was suffocating.
Now
Twelve years later, not much has changed for me socially.
I’ve made and lost online friends as their lives moved on. But offline friendships? I’m agoraphobic. I can’t go out. I’m working on it, but it’s not something I can undo overnight. It took me a long time to get to this point, and it’ll take me a while to get out.
And there’s still a part of me that fears if I form real friendships, I’ll just lose them again.
I’m lucky to have met my boyfriend. He’s been my constant support: patient, kind, and compassionate throughout my recovery. I’m terrified of losing him, too, but we’re moving forward. Together.
I’m making progress, and maybe one day, I’ll even have a full social life again.
The Impact
The impact of this lifelong social isolation is extreme, more than just fear of loss.
I don’t know how to properly interact with others, especially in conversations. I often interrupt without meaning because I’m not used to a natural flow of speech. I miss social cues constantly… and send the wrong ones back. I don’t know what’s appropriate or inappropriate to say or do in certain situations.
I’m always worried I’m doing something wrong, will offend someone, or will come off the wrong way. I want so badly to be seen as normal, but I never quite hit the mark.
Even here, I don't know what's oversharing or not. I also know my tone is flat despite revealing really intimate, traumatic details. I wish I could sound more natural.
I feel like I don’t know how to be human.
And all throughout this, I wonder… how in the hell did anyone ever believe I wanted this?
Throughout my childhood, when I dared wonder why I was so alone, I was told, “You like it.”
I don’t like being alone. I never did. I never wanted to feel like I never belonged anywhere. I never wanted to feel like no one wanted me. I never wanted to feel like everyone hated me.
I never wanted to be alone.
Liking to read, write, draw, or play music doesn’t mean I never wanted friends. It didn’t mean I didn’t want to go out. It just meant I wanted time to pursue those things and then share them with people.
I hate being alone, but loneliness is the only thing I’ve been freely given.
Note: This was a longer and heavier piece, but I hope it helps shed some light on the impacts of early childhood social isolation.
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If you are interested in further reading, here is a post describing my experience with C-PTSD.
I get that. My experience isn't as extreme as yours, but I was very skilled at masking. I still am and apart from my husband, there's no one I consider close enough to open up to. Apparently, I've learned since people in school thought I was popular. They don't realise that none of those people knew me and I'm not in contact with any of them anymore.
I guess the main difference is I like being alone and I like solitude. But unfortunately no matter what I like, human brains don't like it and I have to force social interactions, no matter how shallow, to keep the depression away.
There is so much in this entry that I relate to: being around people supposedly close to me that didn't see the *real* me, only being seen as a religious person(my mom was a minister), being made fun of but being told that was just how people made friends and things weren't "that" serious, not being invited to hang out with people but not feeling comfortable enough to let anyone into my personal life because things at home felt so difficult and different from what anyone else was dealing with.
But first and foremost, I am glad you're still here and alive, Holly. I am glad you're sharing your real lived experiences and writing with us. This piece has touched me because I definitely felt alone on and off through my adolescent years and am climbing out of that murkiness in adulthood.