Letters for loneliness
Loneliness can show up in a crowded room, in a marriage that has gone quiet, after a move to a new city, in retirement when the work that organised your week is gone, after the kids have grown up and out, after the people who used to know you have drifted, after coming out, after coming back from somewhere. It can show up in your twenties when everyone seems to have a group already, and in your sixties when everyone is busy with grandchildren you do not have. The letters in this theme are written by people who have been through that particular kind of quiet — the kind that does not get fixed by being around more people — and want you to know it is not permanent, even when it feels like it. Read one. Save the one that finds you.
You can be lonely next to someone who loves you.
This is one of the hardest things to admit, even to yourself, because it sounds ungrateful, and the person is right there, and they would be hurt to know you wrote this letter, even anonymously, even just in your head. So you don't write it. You sit on the couch next to them and feel completely alone and also completely unable to say so without breaking something.
Naming it does not mean you are leaving. It does not mean the relationship is over. It just means you are letting yourself know what you already know, which is that something between you has gone quiet, and that the quiet is hurting you. That is allowed information.
What you do with it can be a question for another night. Tonight you can just be the person who finally let herself notice.