Tapas has been suggesting some of my old topics to me lately...and I was reminded of when I used to do 'emotional research'! So here's another feeling I'd like to know how to feel~
I don't know if I've ever really been lonely. Sure, I've felt socially frustrated, isolated, excluded...but all of those instances were just reactions to situations where I was inescapably conscious of the fact that I didn't 'fit in'. Having those feelings only makes me want to be totally isolated, so that I can at least do so without the social stigma that comes with it...
I mean, I just had this mini-epiphany yesterday where I realized that I spend the majority of my time by myself, hardly speaking to anyone except for a few phrases uttered to retail workers throughout the day.
And my first thought was "wow, that's sad"...but then I realized that, despite the fact that I'm 'supposed' to feel bad about living this way...I'm not unhappy in the slightest. '_' It feels perfectly normal to me.
...And of course, much much later on, my next thought is "uh oh...there's yet another valuable piece of the human experience that I'm not even conscious of..." ^^;
So how does it feel to be lonely? To long for people...or even just another living thing you can interact with?
And if it's not too much to ask, what about the extremes of loneliness: for instance, longing for people, but being rejected by everyone? Or just longing for one specific person or group of people, without whom the world seems empty...?