I feel loneliest when I am useful but not emotionally included

Dear Delyara, I know how to be valuable in a room. I know how to make tea, solve practical issues, remember details, smooth awkward moments, offer help, listen, carry things, stay late, do the useful part of myself well enough that nobody would ever call me neglected. And yet usefulness is not intimacy. That distinction hurts me more as I get older. You can be central to the running of a family, a workplace, a friendship group, and still feel like the deeper self in you remains largely untouched. People appreciate what you do and never quite meet who you are when the doing stops. I think some of the deepest loneliness in adult life is not being unwanted. It’s being wanted only in the forms that are convenient to the system around you.