What To Do If You’re Feeling Like A Stranger

I was so consumed by this frame of mind, I wrote a book about it. Here’s what I would pass along to others feeling out of place.

Photo by Danny Lines on Unsplash

It began with a breakup. I moved somewhere where I barely knew anyone. My roommate was out every night doing standup comedy, and spent most of his time at his girlfriend’s apartment anyway. Constant first dates made it feel like I was always introducing myself. I missed people who knew something, anything, about me. I missed seeing close friends in person instead of a phone call merely approximating an interaction. I missed intimacy to the point that I began being dramatically more responsive to random strangers. I wrote in a journal at the time that loneliness is a disease.

“Loneliness, she said, is when nothing will stick to you, when nothing will thrive around you, when you start to think that you kill things just by being there.”
— Rachel Cusk

I felt like a stranger to such an intense degree that it started distorting my perceptions. I’ve always been someone who has valued solitary time, but this was way beyond that, and in my isolation, I became extremely sensitive and fragile. I experienced events in a more raw way than before. Marginal things had bigger impacts on me in both good ways and bad. A…