When You’re Doing Everything Right but Still Feel Lonely

“We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.” ~Albert Schweitzer

I pick up my phone even though it has not made a sound.

No missed calls. No new messages. No invitation asking what I am doing or whether I would like to come over. I put it down, but before long I check again.

Still no one.

The only other heartbeat in the house belongs to Oliver, my five-pound chihuahua. He brings me more joy than something so small should be able to carry. I talk to him constantly, and he listens with great interest when he thinks the conversation might involve food. Otherwise, he is not very good at holding up his end.

Most days follow the same routine. I go to work. I go to the gym. I take Oliver for a walk. On the weekends, I take myself to brunch. Occasionally, I travel on my own.

I know how to be alone. That has never been the problem.

The restaurant I go to most often in Buffalo is Roost. I always sit at the bar because, even if no one else talks to me, I know I will have at least some interaction with the people who work there.

I am a regular. Paige always says hello. Martin, the owner, always speaks with me, and when he has time, he will sit down and talk for a little while. Their kindness is genuine, and I value it. I do not walk into Roost unnoticed.

But the people sitting beside me seldom engage beyond hello.

I have tried going at different times: Friday dinner, my usual Saturday brunch, even the busier Sunday brunch, hoping more people might create more opportunities to meet someone.

I follow the advice. I keep my phone out of my hands. I make eye contact. I smile. I keep my posture open. I try to look approachable without looking as though I am trying too hard to be approached.

Most of the time, I finish my meal and go home.

When someone does begin a genuine conversation, something inside me settles. I feel visible. I feel as though, for a little while, my presence matters to someone other than me. The interaction does not have to become a friendship or lead to future plans. It can still relieve the loneliness for the rest of the day.

On the outside, I look put together, independent, and confident. I go to work, exercise, travel alone, and take myself to brunch. I appear to be a woman who is perfectly comfortable on her own.

On the inside, I sometimes feel like a flashing billboard:

Here I am. See me.

Being able to do things alone does not mean I want to experience my life that way. Independence and loneliness can occupy the same chair.

By Christmas 2025, I was tired of spending the holiday at home, feeling sad while imagining everyone else gathered with the people who belonged to them. I decided to try something different. If I was going to be by myself, I could at least be somewhere new.

So I booked a trip to Asheville.

On Christmas Eve, I went out for brunch. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the restaurant was busy. I took a seat at the end of the bar. The first couple beside me did not engage beyond a polite hello.

After they left, an older couple named Terry and Al picked up their drinks from the other end of the bar and moved into the empty seats beside me.

“We are not going to let you sit alone,” they said.

They began talking to me as though crossing the room to include a stranger on Christmas Eve was the most natural thing in the world. When Terry learned I was visiting Asheville on my own, she gave me an entire itinerary of things to see and do. We had a lovely conversation and exchanged phone numbers.

After I left, I texted to thank them. Later that day, they invited me to meet them at Sparky’s Bardega.

I went.

The people there were warm and welcoming. A gentleman came over and started talking to me. Later that evening, after I had left Sparky’s, Terry and Al texted again and invited me to join them for dinner. I met them and had a drink before leaving to continue my conversation with the gentleman I had met earlier.

On Christmas Day, Terry reached out once more and asked if I wanted to meet later. I was tired and leaving the following morning, so I did not go.

But every invitation mattered. Terry and Al had not simply spoken to me at brunch and returned to their lives. They kept remembering me. They continued making room for me.

For that brief time, my presence had registered in someone else’s life.

I have never forgotten how that felt.

It also left me with a question I have not been able to answer: Is it me, or is it where I live?

I have lived in Buffalo for nine years, yet in my experience it can still be a difficult city to enter as a transplant. Many of the people I meet are surrounded by the families and friends with whom they grew up. They share decades of birthdays, weddings, illnesses, children, losses, and ordinary dinners. I have been invited into people’s homes, but those invitations have not developed into the steady connection I long for. Months, and sometimes years, can pass between them. If I make the effort, people are often receptive. But being friendly to someone is different from making room for her in your life.

I do not blame them. They already have people.

There is a stability in being known by someone who remembers who you were before you became who you are. I can recognize that as a blessing and still envy it. I have never had that kind of permanence.

Would life be different if I moved somewhere with more transplants, people who arrived without established circles and were also searching for connection? Would I meet more people willing to pick up their drinks, cross the room, and make space for someone they did not know?

Or would I unpack the same loneliness in a different house?

I know a new city cannot fix everything. Wherever I go, I will take myself with me. I will carry the same tendency to make myself small, to interpret silence as rejection, and to wonder what I could have done differently.

But I have been doing the work. And Asheville makes me wonder whether sometimes the place matters, too.

There are still evenings when the loneliness becomes so overwhelming that I go to bed simply to make the hours pass faster. It is not that I have nothing to do. I can always find something to fill the time.

Lately, I write. It gives the hours somewhere to go.

What I cannot always find is someone with whom to share them.

On the hardest days, the loneliness gives rise to a more unsettling question: If something happened to me inside this house, how long would it take before anyone noticed? Who would find me, and when?

What I want is to know that my presence registers in someone else’s daily life. That someone would notice if I did not text in the morning, arrive when expected, or answer the phone.

Oliver would notice. He notices when I leave the room for five minutes.

I am grateful for him in ways he will never understand. But my heart still longs for a person with whom I can share my life, someone to sit across from at dinner, tell the small details of my day, travel with occasionally, and love Oliver with me.

The cost of loneliness is not only the absence of company. It is the way that absence turns inward. A silent phone becomes evidence. An empty evening becomes a verdict. Instead of asking why connection can be so difficult to find, I ask what must be wrong with me that no one is looking.

I suspect I am not the only person asking.

Somewhere, another person is following the same advice. They have put away their phone. They are making eye contact, smiling, and trying to appear open. They may be surrounded by people and still wondering whether anyone will choose the empty seat beside them.

Perhaps that is one of loneliness’s cruelest tricks: it convinces each of us that we are the only one no one chose.

Knowing there may be others does not make the house less quiet. It does not make the phone ring or place someone across from me at dinner. But it reminds me that loneliness is not proof that I am uniquely unworthy of being loved.

I do not know yet how to make the loneliness end.

For now, I go to work. I go to the gym. I walk Oliver. I take myself to brunch. I write. I keep putting myself in places where connection might happen, even when it does not.

After Asheville, I returned to the same routine, the same quiet house, and the same silent phone. Nothing had been solved. But the kindness I found there left me questioning the conclusion I have carried for so long.

When do we stop asking what is wrong with us and begin asking whether we are trying to belong in the wrong place?

About Treina Saint

Treina M. Saint is a Canadian-born writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her personal essays explore relationships, loneliness, faith, survival, and the lifelong work of learning to see oneself clearly. She is currently completing her memoir, The Girl I Couldn't See.

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