Dallas Bragg argues loneliness isn't about being alone. It's the gap between the parts of yourself you've rejected because your parents, religion, or culture said they were wrong. That internal split, not an empty room, is what makes you feel isolated in a crowd.
So let's talk about loneliness. Where does it come from? What's it caused by? You're not born lonely, obviously, right? You're born whole. And then all of that is present before anybody told you which parts of yourself are acceptable and which aren't. That's called socialization. A parent disapproves. A religion draws a line. Gay culture tells you a new set of rules about which version of yourself is desirable and what it should look like. Each disapproval registers in your nervous system not as a correction, but as a threat to your connection. A connection to somebody or a group of people who's important to you. Connection is survival. So that part of you that caused the disapproval of that person or that group gets buried, gets cut off, gets rejected. That part of me is causing me to not be included. Whatever that may be. A lot of us, it's being gay, right? So here's the mechanism that makes this so painful. You cannot push something away from yourself without creating space between you and it. That space inside you and the other parts of yourself is loneliness. That is why you feel lonely. It's not— you can add as many people on the outside as possible. You can be in a room full of people and still feel isolated and lonely. It's because you have all this space between you and the parts of yourself that you were told were wrong.
