Loneliness is a bitch. Or at least, that’s what I used to think.
It’s not just about being alone. It’s feeling like no one really gets you. Like you can be surrounded by people, talking, laughing, existing, and still feel like you’re on the outside, looking in on a world that wasn’t built for you. It’s knowing you’re different, and feeling like you constantly have to explain it, justify it, or shrink it down so others don’t feel uncomfortable.
It’s a kind of isolation that’s hard to put into words, especially when you’re a creative. When your mind works in ways that don’t quite fit the mould, the loneliness goes deeper. It’s not just emotional. It’s creative loneliness.
I’ve felt my whole life like I’m speaking a language no one else understands. Like I got dropped into a world where everyone was handed a manual except me. I tried to follow the rules, tried to be what people expected, but it never felt natural.
I wasn’t one of those kids who knew exactly what they wanted to be when they grew up. That was never me. And when I saw how easily others seemed to fit in, I started wondering if I was the problem.
That feeling never really left. Even now, I struggle to feel understood. Especially when what I do doesn’t come with a neat job title. People want to box you in: “So, what do you do now? Are you still doing music? Still making jewellery? Still in design?” Like I’m meant to pick one thing and stick to it for life. But I’m not just one thing. I never have been. I never will be.
And that’s the weight of this creative loneliness, it makes it almost impossible to explain who you are. How do you express yourself when you don’t fit into any of the categories the world recognises? How do you get people to believe in what you do when they don’t even know what to call it?
And I’ve come to realise that this creative loneliness is also fed by how we live online. We’re not really connected to reality, we’re connected to selling our creativity. We show it more than we live it. And in all that noise, we start to lose the truth of who we are.
I’ve spent years trying to present myself in a way that made sense to other people. More clear. More polished. More… marketable. And every time I did, it felt like I was betraying myself. Because the truth is I don’t fit. And maybe that’s not a flaw. Maybe that’s the point.
Loneliness has been with me for as long as I can remember. But lately, I’ve been wondering if it’s not here to break me. Maybe it’s here to remind me that I don’t need to belong to a world that was never meant for me.
I can build my own.
At some point, I stopped waiting to be understood. If this world doesn’t have space for me, I’ll create one that does. One where I don’t have to justify who I am. Where my curiosity isn’t a burden, it’s my power. I stopped squeezing myself into spaces that made me smaller, and started expanding into places that didn’t even exist yet. And if they didn’t exist, I made them.
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