Loneliness

Hi everyone am here because I got betrayed and hurt and I don’t really want to be here anymore but am trying to find people who I can connect with and build myself back up better #Depression #Anxiety #Grief #lonely

Hi everyone am here because I got betrayed and hurt and I don’t really want to be here anymore but am trying to find people who I can connect with and build myself back up better #Depression #Anxiety #Grief #lonely

Hi, my name is MauveSheep01834. I'm here because ,nobody cares how much pain I'm in ...I so tired of over doing myself ,I'm depress lonely and scared

#MightyTogether #Fibromyalgia

Hi, my name is JuliaMinna. I'm here because I feel lonely a lot of the time, like no one understands my brain.

#MightyTogether #Anxiety #ADHD #OCD #EatingDisorder

I’ve always felt like I have to be agreeable and stay small — emotionally, socially, even physically — to be accepted. Like if I take up too much space, say the wrong thing, or show how sad or angry I really am, people will leave.

Lately, I’ve been stuck in this cycle of loneliness and self-doubt. I don’t feel like I have any close friends, and I can’t tell if it’s me — or if I’ve just been hurt too many times to trust anyone anymore.

When people are nice to me, I assume they feel sorry for me. And I know I talk negatively sometimes, but that’s because I’m carrying so much I haven’t had anywhere to put.

I’m tired of hiding how much I’m struggling. I just needed to say this somewhere.

I Was Raised to Be Small — I Chose to Become

by Max Sunflower

I am a very soft person.

Not delicate, but deliberate. I move slowly now. I speak with care. I pick my battles like wildflowers — rarely, and only when the ground calls for it. I set boundaries like candles around a sacred room. I take chances, yes, but only the ones that whisper to me gently.

I’ve learned how to block out what no longer serves me — voices that once shaped me, paths that led to silence, dreams that were never mine to begin with. And somewhere along the way, I found my footing. Sobriety taught me that groundedness isn't a destination — it's a daily ritual. A way of folding yourself back into your body and saying, You’re safe here now.

I’m one year sober. I’ve returned to school to pursue my bachelor’s. I didn’t expect to fall in love with learning — but I have. There’s something holy about watching yourself inch closer to a goal you once believed was too far gone.

But before I could choose this version of myself, I had to confront a haunting truth:

I had been pretending for a very long time.

The Pretending

As a child, I lived in a small room with pale walls and a television that only knew how to speak in reruns. My companions were plush toys lined up like pews, and worn-out VHS tapes of Barney that played over and over, as if the purple dinosaur was the only adult who had time to teach me love.

I spent hours alone, suspended in a world of pastel imagination — drawing pictures of places I’d never seen, creating voices for characters that felt more real than my reality. It was a quiet kind of survival. One without bruises, but heavy with silence. I don’t remember feeling unsafe. Just… unseen.

They say imagination is a gift. For me, it was oxygen.

In that lonely room, I crafted entire worlds in my head. I didn’t know it then, but I was already doing the bravest thing I could: imagining a life beyond what was laid out for me.

I was raised to follow a script. To be obedient. To fit within the smallness of what others could envision for me. But I’ve always questioned things — quietly, curiously, in a way that made people uncomfortable. I didn’t think like my teachers. I didn’t believe that rules were sacred just because they’d always been there.

I could feel it in my bones — that I was meant to bloom wider than the pot I was planted in.

But the blooming didn’t come easy.

The Breaking

Emerging from the cocoon wasn’t graceful. It was clumsy, disorienting — like stumbling out of a fog only to realize the world is louder than you imagined.

Breaking free from that smallness meant feeling everything I had suppressed: the loneliness, the self-doubt, the aching need to be known. I was directionless. My voice felt foreign. I was a grown person who had never been taught how to become.

I had no blueprint. No mentors. No language for belonging.

At one point, I heard someone say, “You can only be as great as your parents.” That phrase gripped me. It rattled around my chest like a threat disguised as wisdom. If that were true — if my destiny stopped where their vision ended — then I was doomed to play a part that never fit me.

But something inside me refused.

The only way I knew how to break the mold was through rebellion — not loud or violent, but sacred. A soft refusal. A tender no. A quiet declaration: I will not become what you imagined for me. I will become what I imagine for myself.

The Becoming

These days, I don’t move through life like someone trying to prove anything. I’m not chasing applause. I’m not seeking permission.

I’m learning to be someone I feel safe with.

That, to me, is the art of becoming: becoming the kind of person your younger self would want to run to — arms open, heart soft, voice steady.

Refuge isn’t a cabin in the woods or a beach far away. It’s sitting in a room you used to feel anxious in and realizing your shoulders aren’t tight anymore. It’s breathing deeply on a Tuesday and realizing your peace is no longer performative.

Refuge is becoming someone who no longer abandons yourself.

The Truth

If you’re still in the cocoon — unsure, aching, watching the world go by through a frosted lens — I want you to know this:

You are not broken. You are becoming.

Your softness is not a flaw — it’s proof that you survived without hardening.

Your questions are not a burden — they are the gateway to truth.

And your rebellion — gentle, sacred, and slow — is not the end of something. It is the very beginning.

You were not made to stay small.

You were made to bloom.

Written by Max Sunflower

A voice for softness, sacred rebellion, and quiet transformation

I feel hopeless. Sometimes i feel so alone, i get desperate. I feel like i'm always feeling bad and I think that the people around me are tired of me or they pretend that everything is fine. But i'm collapsing inside. I've made so many changes in my life lately, and if I think about that I'm happy and satisfied, but then there are moments when I still sink into a black hole and i feel so sad. Then I think that people of my age shouldn't have these thoughts, they should enjoy life, but I can't and i'm wasting these years without being able to enjoy the good things. I am surrounded by beautiful things, and I will graduate next month, and I have dedicated my whole life to this goal. But now it's like I don't care that much anymore. This thing scares me. I know I have to be less hard on myself, but I feel like a disappointment #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #EDS #Loneliness #MentalHealth #ChronicIllness #ChronicFatigue #ChronicPain #Trauma #DistractMe #CheckInWithMe #Depression #Anxiety #Grief #SocialAnxiety #MightyTogether

So we haven’t talked since Friday. I got slightly drunk Friday night. I’d had an anxiety attack at work after the going away luncheon that I saw him at. He didn’t talk to me, didn’t look at me. Just nothing. So I ended up having a few drinks at home, and made the mistake of texting him, telling him how upset I was over this whole situation, how I’d had an anxiety attack after lunch, how I missed him, etc.
He responded a half hour later, pretty much saying that he didn’t know what to say, that he was sorry I was feeling like, that he does like me, and he knows he’s got a lot going on and that he’d be ok with reaching out once things fall more into place for him, that he hasn’t been able to give me enough right now, but he’ll be more available once things slow down.
I was very disappointed by that response. So I left him on read and went to bed.
The next morning I regretted texting him, and then I was even more stupid and texted him saying I was sorry for sending that. He didn’t respond and I haven’t talk to him or heard from him since.

Then yesterday, I start not feeling great at work, and about an hour after I get home, I have a massive anxiety attack that last five hours. I broke down and called a friend, told her what was going on, and she drove a half hour to come keep me company. I’ve never asked anyone for help like that. But all I could think was that I wished it’d been him here. How fucked up is that?