I am lonelier in rooms where I almost fit than in rooms where I clearly don’t

Dear Delyara, That’s a hard truth to admit, but it keeps proving itself. In rooms where I obviously do not belong, the loneliness is clean. It has edges. I understand what it is. But in rooms where I almost fit — where I can function, contribute, smile, speak, respond, and still feel some essential part of me remaining unwitnessed — the loneliness feels stranger and more piercing. Because almost-belonging is crueler than absence sometimes. It gives the body just enough social contact to keep hope alive, while the deeper self still goes untouched. I think a lot of my adult loneliness lives there. Not in empty rooms. In rooms full of partial recognition. And partial recognition can be a very exhausting kind of starvation.