On my birthday, Halsey released a song titled, “you should be sad”.

How appropriate.

There’s a gnawing emptiness I have felt for so so long. I don’t know how to avoid this emptiness, Contradictorily, it seems to have more presence than anything I feel in my life. Over the past couple of weeks, I have tried to develop healthy relationships in my life. And, it is once again that I am confronted with the futility of my attempt. How could I ever think that I could ever achieve those same healthy relationships my friends have come to know. I’m not sure whether I was naive or stupid to believe that I could do so. How could I ever be destined to share those types of moments?

I tried. I really tried to be healthy. But, it is the emptiness that constantly returns in my life and distances me from all the progress I have made. How could I ever empathize with their life when I have all of this sadness that is kept standing only by the force of stress? This is my life. This is the life that I have come to know so well. How naive I must have been to ever believe that things could be different. Right now, it is just so clear that I was not destined for happiness. In the morning, I will forget this.

One of my friends once said that he does not understand why others don’t have friends, in the context of judging someone else. At the time, I didn’t say much, but, in retrospect, I think why his statement bothered me so much was because it could have easily referred to me. I don’t think I have ever not felt lonely in my life, and I feel that way because sometimes I truly believe that I have no friends. There was another friend who once asked me what the opposite of loneliness felt like, and I really couldn’t tell her.