Well, shit

It’s feeling like you’re that well-meant gift that the recipient didn’t want and doesn’t care for, or a piece of furniture that never went with anything else in the house but is too much trouble to get rid of, or that weird book on the shelf that no-one understands and can’t be arsed to try.

1. Work.

The others in the department save seats for each other near the front of the hall for the quarterly business review and party. They don’t ask and don’t care that I don’t have a seat. I get my own. At the back. It’s better that way - I don’t have to talk to anyone.

2. Holidays.

I don’t take them because I have nowhere to go and no-one to go with. When I do eventually have to take my statutory holiday, people at work have no idea that I’ve booked the time off (even though they approved it in the system, so I knew it was ok to not turn up to work) and don’t notice I’m missing for the first few hours. My shift starts before theirs. I sit four feet from them. I am never not in.

3. Websites.

I join up and make an effort to put my best photos on there, my friendliest banter, my most open-minded conversation skills on - and don’t even get trolled.

4. Writing novels.

I send tailor-made letters and submission packages of my book to agents. More than 40 in just over 4 years. Most of them don’t even acknowledge that they’ve received the email (not even an automatic bounce-back). The others turn me down after anywhere between 2 - 4 months.

5. “Where’s mine?”

There comes a point, and mine has been about twenty years in the making, that you have to ask yourself why you’re bothering to keep calm and carry on, and why you’re not just stopping to look around and ask “Where’s mine? How come I don’t have XYZ?”. You don’t do it and don’t do it, because it’s whining and it’s self-centred, it’s conceited and childish. But one day you’ve just had enough and you wonder how anyone else has found what they want - and why you haven’t.

It must be me, right? I must be doing something wrong. I am, I know I am. I know I’m not a participant like all the people at work are. However I also know that a woman at work who is borderline agoraphobic and mostly an introvert has also dated 2 people in the 18 months I’ve known her. How does she do it when she shies away from meeting people in the first place? (This is why I’ve joined dating sites. I’ve tried to start conversations, get ‘involved’ in group discussions, but no-one replies once I start with the polite openings and then the groups themselves peter out. See? It’s me.) She bumped into one bloke at a petrol station. I fill up three times more often than she does and look how many people, let alone eligible blokes, I’ve bumped into. Clue: I’d say you could count them on one finger but you wouldn’t need that many fingers. The other bloke she met through a friend. I’ve had friends set me up before, and blind-date me, and randomly pair me off - you get to guess how many ended up in dating (clue: less than those fingers). I did like one bloke once (and we’re talking close to ten years ago now). Turns out I liked him more than he liked me, so it ended before it had even begun.

But enough moping. Forward, not back, as they say: what do you do?

a. Like more stuff.

Expose yourself to more new stuff, in the hopes that you’ll pick up new hobbies or interests. Yeah, done that over the past 4 years. Now a lot more read and a lot more aware, but still boring to everyone else, apparently.

b. Pretend to like things you don’t.


Not a fan of this. It’s lying and it’s pointless. Say you do find someone due to having a topic or hobby in common; what happens when that’s the only thing you have in common, and you have to confess that you don’t even like it that much anyway? Hmm. Answers on a postcard.

c. Resign yourself to the fact that it’s not loneliness, it’s just How Things Are.

This is looking more and more likely. Talk me out of it, I dare you.

In fact, loneliness I can deal with - I’m used to it. It’s the boredom, the being sick of your own company, that really compounds the whole problem. That and the whole ‘may as well be invisible’ thing, as detailed at the beginning of this article.

It’s getting late. I have to go to bed so I can pretend to sleep, then get up and go to work to do all those essential, tiny things that keep the world going round - all those things people aren’t even aware of. Hmm - sounds like someone I know.