I can feel invisible in a full room

Dear Delyara, That is one of the most painful forms of loneliness I know. The room can be full of people. Family talking, children asking things, the television on, ordinary life happening. And still I can feel that no one has actually reached me in the place where being known would soften me. I answer, I smile, I function, I stay warm enough not to frighten the room with my distance, and all the while I feel emotionally unfound. That’s why loneliness is so hard to explain when your life looks busy from outside. People assume contact is comfort. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it is just noise around an unvisited self. I think I have lived too many evenings like that.