Dear Duesexmachina,

I only just registered on this site so I can reply to your post. I found it as I was googling “how to get over heartbreak”. I write this to you now as I lay on my couch with a huge hole in my heart. The void, this loneliness, is unbearable. Loneliness has to be one of the most excruciating human emotions. You wear it day in and out. It can be with you everywhere you go, and in everything you do. You wake up with it, eat, work, and go back to bed and sleep at night with it. I want you to know, without doubt, that you are not alone in this. Loneliness is like a pandemic. A bi-product of these ‘independent’ societies we’ve built, when in reality humans were never meant to live alone or be independent of one another.

I am not ‘ugly’…actually, most people would classify me as attractive to one degree or the other, and while I’ve been lucky and blessed enough to have had love in my life, and more so having the love and support of family and friends, I too am lonely. Painfully lonely. Being physically attractive helps, but I promise you, it does not guarantee much less loneliness. Don’t put all your focus and despair on your physical appearance.

It hurts me to hear you call yourself ‘ugly’. Please don’t reduce yourself to a negative label of a physical appearance. Surely there is so much more to us than what our physical body looks like? I assure you I’ve known ‘beautiful’ people who are far ‘uglier’ than you say you are. People see in you what you see in yourself, and as such project. That is why, over time, some people become either more or less beautiful in each others’ eyes. Be careful of how you label yourself. Words matter.

It’s hard not to let this loneliness take over my life. So I too do as you do.. I keep trying. I focus on work, join clubs, try to reach out to friends. Try to keep busy and focused on the positive. That I am healthy. That I have a home, a job, time for myself, etc. That I dont live in war and am better of than most people on this planet living in dire conditions. At night, instead of letting this loneliness consume me, I started to meditate and practice gratitude. It worked for me. A lot. Gratitude started to slowly creep into my days as well and has made me happier.

There is not a solution to loneliness. It can only go away when you find someone to share your life with, and even then, only when that someone is right for you. Not common at all. Even millions of couples live in loneliness, each one trapped in their togetherness, uncared for, and not knowing how to get out.

I cant tell you how to become un-lonely. All I can tell you is to remind yourself how un-alone you are in this. How its the norm, and not the exception. And also to tell you that, instead of fighting it, I tried to find ways to make peace with it, and get through it. For me, meditation was one of the answers. Trying to connect with something bigger and more whole. Trying to find more peace. And gratitude for what I do have instead.