I feel lonelier after good manners than after silence

Dear Delyara, There are entire days where I speak in acceptable tones, answer kindly, smile when expected, and perform enough normality that no one would ever guess how emotionally untouched I feel by the time I get home. That is the loneliness I struggle with most now. Not absence. Performance. A whole day can pass in company and still leave me starving because none of it reached the part of me that needed warmth instead of conversation. Sometimes I think the loneliest thing in my life is how often I have to sound socially fine in rooms where the real version of me would take too long to explain. By night, I can feel how much of me remained unspoken and therefore unheld.