Loneliness is suffocating

It begins quietly, almost imperceptibly. Loneliness doesn’t announce itself with grand gestures or heavy footsteps. It seeps in like smoke under a door, curling around the edges of your thoughts, filling the spaces you didn’t know were empty. You try to breathe through it, but it clings to your lungs, making each inhalation feel heavier than the last.

Loneliness isn’t just the absence of people, it’s the absence of connection. You can sit in a crowded room and feel it pressing against your chest, tighter and tighter, until you wonder if anyone notices you struggling to catch your breath. You smile, nod, and laugh at the right moments, all while feeling like a ghost haunting a life that no longer belongs to you.

There was a time, not long ago, when I thought loneliness was a state you could escape with enough effort. I believed in distractions: busy schedules, endless to-do lists, phone calls to fill the silence. But distractions are slippery. They work for a while, and then suddenly, they don’t. You look up from your book or your screen, and there it is again, staring at you with unblinking eyes.

I remember a night when it hit me all at once. The room was quiet, too quiet, and the air felt heavy. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of a clock I hadn’t looked at in hours. I tried turning on the TV, but the voices felt foreign, artificial, as though they were speaking to someone else. And maybe they were. Because in that moment, I was alone, not just physically, but in a way that felt deeper, more profound.

It suffocates not because it’s loud, but because it’s so unbearably quiet. It whispers doubts in your ear, questions you don’t want to answer. Why don’t they call? Why don’t they notice? Why can’t I just be happy with my own company? These questions don’t have answers, or at least not ones that satisfy.

And yet, loneliness is not a thing you can fight. You can’t push it away or bury it under layers of distraction. It demands to be felt, to be acknowledged. That’s the hardest part, I think, sitting with it, letting it unravel you, exposing the parts of yourself you’d rather keep hidden.

Loneliness teaches you things, though. It teaches you about the fragility of human connection, about the importance of small gestures, a text, a smile, a moment of eye contact that says, I see you. It teaches you to listen, not just to others but to yourself. To sit with the discomfort and ask, What am I really afraid of?

But it also teaches you how strong you can be. Because there is strength in enduring something that feels unbearable. There is strength in waking up every day, carrying the weight of that suffocating presence, and still moving forward.

Loneliness doesn’t last forever, though it feels eternal when you’re in it. It ebbs and flows, like waves crashing against the shore. And when it finally recedes, even for a moment, you realize how much lighter the air feels. You take a deep breath, and for the first time in what feels like forever, it doesn’t hurt.

Maybe that’s the lesson, if there is one. Loneliness suffocates, yes. But it also reminds you to value the moments when you can breathe freely. It teaches you to reach out, to hold on, to find connection wherever you can. Because in the end, we all crave the same thing: to be seen, to be heard, to know that we are not alone. And that, perhaps, is what saves us.