Navigating Loneliness and the Search for Meaning

An intimate exploration of isolation, time, and the internal struggle for purpose

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What am I supposed to do in the meantime?

I ask myself, pacing the empty rooms. What do you do when you’ve grown accustomed to loneliness? How do you fill not just time, but the emptiness that has settled in your bones, in the very coasts of your ribcage where joy once resided?The solitude I now experience is without echo, without reflection. It doesn’t call me to action, nor does it provide comfort. It doesn’t send me anywhere. It doesn’t even challenge me. It just is — like a void that has swallowed the pulse of my life, leaving behind nothing but questions.

I ask myself, What is the point of keeping track of unanswered questions, when every word I write now feels like a question never asked? Certainty is a myth, replaced by a vague suspicion that I’m missing something. Memories haunt me — not the ones I’ve lived, but the ones I never had. You know what it’s like, don’t you? To recall things that never happened, to feel nostalgia for moments that were never yours?