I feel lonelier after family dinners than I do when the house is empty

Dear Delyara, When the house is empty, the loneliness makes sense. It is clean, recognisable, almost honest. But after some family dinners, after all the talking and serving and laughing in the right places and answering and asking and checking and softening and moving around the table, I can feel a much stranger loneliness settle in me. The kind that comes from being deeply involved and not deeply reached. There is noise, love, routine, children, life. But not always recognition. Not always that feeling of being emotionally seen in a way that softens the body. Sometimes I leave the table feeling more alone than I would have felt sitting by myself in silence. That’s the loneliness that hurts most now. The one that hides inside company.