Loneliness Is Not a Curse: When Empty Space Starts to Feel Like Rejection

Dr. Carmela Maxell: Welcome back to Rooted in Rising. I'm Dr. Carmella Maxwell. Before we get started, make sure you follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. And if this episode makes you think of somebody who has been spending a little more time alone lately, or somebody who keeps saying, I'm fine, but you know damn well there's a little more underneath that, send this episode to them. Because today, I want to talk about loneliness. Not isolation, not solitude. Not the cute version of being alone where you're sitting in a beautiful apartment with a glass of wine, a candle burning, jazz playing softly in the background, journaling about your personal growth. No. I mean lonely. The kind where the house feels too quiet. The kind where you pick up your phone and realize you don't actually know who to call. The kind where everybody seems to be living their lives while yours somehow feels like it's standing still. And if you've ever been there, you probably know that loneliness can start feeling like something more than an emotion. It can start feeling like a verdict. Like maybe this is happening because something's wrong with you. Maybe you're awkward. Maybe you're difficult. Maybe you're unlikable. Maybe you're too much. Maybe you're not enough. Maybe you're unlovable. Maybe everybody else figured out some secret to relationships and belonging that somehow you missed. And after a while, loneliness can start feeling less like a season and more like a punishment. Like life put you in timeout. And everybody else gets to go outside and play. But I've learned something about loneliness. Sometimes the empty space in our lives isn't there to punish us. Sometimes it's the first quiet place we've had in a very long time where we can actually hear ourselves. I went through a period where I felt incredibly lonely. And I don't mean I was literally alone. That's one of the strangest things about loneliness. You can have people around you. You can have children who need you, coworkers who need you. Employees who need you, students who need you, people calling you, people emailing you, people asking questions, people needing decisions, and still feel profoundly alone. Because being needed isn't the same thing as being held. And I think that's an important distinction. I'm a single mother, and there are parts of single motherhood that are just lonely. Not because you don't love your children, not because you're ungrateful, but because sometimes there's nobody sitting next to you when the day is over who understands everything it took to get everybody through that day. There's nobody to look at and say, Did you see that shit? You're the one making the decisions. You're the one worrying. You're the one figuring out schedules. You're the one thinking three steps ahead. You're the one wondering if you're getting it right. And sometimes you're also the one sitting there after everybody goes to sleep thinking, who takes care of me? Then there was leadership. Leadership can be incredibly isolating. Because the higher you move, the fewer places there are where you can safely put everything you're carrying. You're expected to have answers. You're expected to regulate yourself. You're expected to make decisions that not everybody will understand. Sometimes you know things you can't discuss. Sometimes you're carrying responsibility for outcomes you can't completely control. And you can be surrounded by people all day long and still leave work feeling alone. Then my friends had lives because apparently they had the audacity to have their own responsibilities. People were busy. Nobody was doing anything wrong. Nobody abandoned me. Nobody decided they didn't care about me. Life was simply happening. But when you're already lonely, other people's normal busyness can feel incredibly personal. And there were moments where it felt like my entire world was falling apart while everybody else was just living. And sometimes The best I could do was cry. That was it. There wasn't a beautiful lesson. I didn't immediately meditate. I didn't journal my way into enlightenment. I cried. I sat in my misery. I sulked. I felt sorry for myself. And frankly, sometimes you need a good sulk. Not indefinitely. But I think we're so obsessed with turning every uncomfortable emotion into personal growth that we forget we're allowed to just feel like shit sometimes. I wasn't immediately trying to become a better person. I was just hurting. So I tried to fill the space. Eventually, though, sitting with loneliness gets uncomfortable. So you start trying to fill it. And I found ways. One of those ways was shopping. Amazon unfortunately knows me very well at this point. Far too well. That algorithm sees me coming. she's emotionally vulnerable tonight. Show her the thing. Suddenly I'm looking at something I have never needed in my entire life, thinking, you know what? Maybe my life would improve if I own this. And Amazon is like, it'll be there at 7 a.m. No judgment. No questions. Just prime. And shopping gives you a little hit. You have something to look forward to. The package is coming. There's anticipation, there's novelty, there's a tiny dopamine reward. For a few minutes, the empty space doesn't feel quite as empty. But then the package comes. You open it, and eventually, you're still sitting with yourself. Because loneliness is incredibly patient. You can distract yourself from it. You can shop over it. You can work over it. You can scroll over it. You can eat over it. You can date over it. You can stay constantly busy so you never have to hear it. But if there's something inside of that loneliness asking for your attention, it'll wait. And then you look around. This was also happening during one of those periods where it seemed like everybody around me was doing better than I was. You know those seasons? Everybody is winning, except apparently you. Somebody bought a house. Somebody is on some lavish vacation. Somebody has apparently mastered self-care and is drinking cucumber water at a resort while wearing a white robe. Then there's the promotions. Somebody launched something. Someone got married or remarried. Someone found the love of their life. Someone is posting, When you know, you know. And I'm like, fantastic. I'm so happy for you. Meanwhile, I'm celebrating because my favorite snacks were on sale at the grocery store. That's my victory. Everybody else is in Santorini. I save $3.47 at Safeway. Somebody else is posting engagement pictures. I just save 50 cents on a gallon of gas. And I keep talking about these gas prices. That's basically financial planning. But comparison does something really ugly when you're already lonely. Because you don't compare your entire life to somebody else's entire life. You compare your emptiest moment to their fullest one. You compare your Tuesday night sitting on the couch to somebody's wedding, your grocery store trip to somebody's vacation, your exhaustion to somebody's promotion announcement, your quiet household to somebody's family photos. your uncertainty to somebody else's highlight. And then you ask, what is wrong with life? And sometimes, what is wrong with me? Then I had a conversation with a friend. And this was someone I thought had it together. From where I was standing, her life looked full. Busy, successful, connected. She had things happening. And I remember talking to her one day and realizing that what I saw from the outside was not what she was experiencing from the inside. Her life was chaotic. She was overwhelmed. There were things happening that I didn't know about. And she said something to me that completely shifted my perspective. She said, Carmella, I wish I had the free time that you do. Just that space to be able to think and breathe for a second. Sometimes my brain and my life are just so crowded. And I remember thinking, wait, what? Because she was looking at something I had been treating like evidence of my failure and seeing freedom. I saw emptiness. She saw space. I saw nobody being around. She saw quiet. I saw life that wasn't moving fast enough. She saw room to breathe. And neither of us was necessarily wrong. We were simply standing on opposite sides of the same thing. Was complaining about was somebody else's breathing room. That conversation really stayed with me because nothing about my circumstances changed after she said it. I didn't suddenly have a partner. My responsibilities didn't disappear. My friends didn't suddenly clear their calendars. Leadership didn't become less isolating. Nobody showed up at my house with a bottle of wine and said, Carmela, we realize you've been lonely. We're here to entertain you. Absolutely nothing changed. Except my perspective. And sometimes that's frustrating to hear because people love saying, change your perspective. Okay, Barbara. Sometimes my perspective is that this shit sucks. But this was different. Because for the first time, I realized that I had been looking at every open space in my life and automatically labeling it as something missing. An empty evening? Something missing. Nobody texting me? Something missing. A weekend without plans? Something missing. Nobody sitting next to me? Something missing. And my friend looked at that same space and said, I wish I had that. That fucked me up a little bit. Because I started thinking about how often we don't appreciate something until we see it through somebody else's eyes. I had time. Not unlimited time. I'm still a mother. I still work. I still have approximately 700 things happening at any given moment. But I had pockets of time where nobody was asking me for anything. And I had been treating those pockets like evidence that nobody wanted me? What if they were rest? What if they were recovery? What if they were room? What if life wasn't saying nobody wants to be with you? What if life was simply saying, here, sit down for a minute? And maybe that's why we have to be careful about the meaning we assign to empty space. Because empty doesn't always mean abandoned. Quiet doesn't always mean forgotten. And alone doesn't always mean unwanted. Maybe this isn't a punishment. That conversation didn't suddenly make me never lonely again. Let's be clear. I did not hang up the phone, light some incense, and announce, I have discovered solitude. No. Loneliness still hurts sometimes. I still wanted companionship. I still wanted connection. I still wanted somebody to talk to. I still had nights where the quiet felt heavier than I wanted it to. But I started to ask a different question. Instead of, why am I alone? I started asking, what is available to me because I have this space? And that's a completely different question. Because maybe loneliness isn't always evidence that something is missing. Sometimes loneliness creates room. Room to hear yourself. Room to figure out what you actually like. Room to stop performing. Room to stop accommodating everybody else's needs. Room to figure out who you are when nobody is watching. Room to realize how much of your identity has been built around being useful to other people. And that one that one can become very uncomfortable. Nobody needs you. Some of us have built entire identities around being needed. We're the helper, the parent, the leader, the responsible one, the strong friend, the fixer, the person everybody calls. And when nobody needs anything for a minute, we don't necessarily experience that as peace. Sometimes we experience it as, do I matter? Because if your value has always been reinforced through usefulness, stillness can feel like rejection. Nobody is calling. Nobody needs anything. Nobody is asking for you. And suddenly you have to exist without producing something for somebody else. That's hard. But maybe that's also where you start learning. I don't have to be useful to deserve my own company. I don't have to accomplish anything today for this day to matter. I don't need somebody else's attention to confirm that I exist. I can enjoy myself without needing an audience. And I can want connection without believing my life is incomplete until it arrives. There's another kind of loneliness that I don't think we talk about enough. The loneliness of being perceived as capable. When you're the person who handles shit, people start assuming that you will continue handling shit. And honestly, it's not malicious. You've trained them. You've been handling shit for years. Problem happens, you figure it out. Crisis? You respond. Something breaks, you find the solution. Something else falls apart, you become calm. You become the person people call because they know. Carmella will know what to do. And there's pride in that. I like being competent. I like being dependable. I like knowing that when something goes sideways, I can usually figure out what needs to happen next. But Competence has a shadow side. Sometimes people forget that the strong person gets tired. Sometimes people can assume that because you can carry something, it isn't heavy. And sometimes the person everybody calls when they're falling apart realizes, I don't actually know who I'm supposed to call when I'm falling apart. That's lonely. Leadership can feel like that. Parenthood can feel like that. Being the strong friend can feel like that. Sometimes you're surrounded by people who genuinely love you, and you still feel lonely because everyone knows the version of you who can handle it. But you desperately want somebody to notice the version of you who doesn't want to handle one more fucking thing today. And I think that's why we have to distinguish between being surrounded and being seen. Because you can have a full contact list and still feel unseen. You can have people talking to you all day and still feel unheard. You can have people depending on you and still feel unsupported. You can be loved and still feel lonely. That's important because otherwise we start looking at ourselves thinking, I have people. Why do I feel like this? Because loneliness isn't always about the number of people around you. Sometimes it's about whether you feel like there's somewhere you can put down the version of yourself everybody relies on. Sometimes you don't need more people. Sometimes you need one place where you don't have to be strong. And sometimes, before that place exists outside of you, you have to learn how to create some of it inside you. Place where you can say, I'm tired. I'm scared. I'm overwhelmed. I don't know. I don't want to fix anything today. And none of those statements makes you less capable. They just make you human. Now, I don't want to romanticize loneliness. Humans need connection. We need community. We need people. Chronic isolation can be painful. There are absolutely times when loneliness is telling us you need to reach out. Call somebody. Join something. Leave the house. Build community. Let people know you need support. Loneliness isn't always some spiritual assignment from the universe. Sometimes you're fucking lonely and you just need people. But there is a difference between I need more connection, and my loneliness proves I'm unlovable. Those are completely different statements. One identifies a need, the other attacks your identity. And loneliness becomes dangerous emotionally when we start turning circumstances into character judgments. I'm alone tonight becomes nobody wants me. My friends are busy becomes nobody cares about me. I'm single becomes I'm unlovable. Nobody invited me becomes I'm unlikable. My phone is quiet becomes nobody thinks about me. Those conclusions hurt far more than the original circumstance. Sometimes it feels like everybody else got invited to life. Social media makes loneliness weird. Because you can be perfectly okay at 7.02 PM. Then you open Instagram at 704. And apparently everyone you have ever met is thriving. Somebody's in Greece. Somebody bought a house. Somebody got engaged. Somebody's pregnant. Somebody just saved a bunch of money on their car insurance by switching to Geico. Somebody's business just had its best quarter ever. Somebody lost 30 pounds. Somebody's children are standing perfectly still in matching outfits. Which already feels suspicious. Because whose children are those? Somebody is celebrating 10, 20, 30 years of marriage. Somebody else got divorced and somehow their divorce apparently gave them abs, a new wardrobe, and a condo with floor to ceiling windows. Meanwhile, you're sitting on the couch eating crackers directly out of the sleeve, wondering, did everybody get an email about how to do adulthood except me? And logically, we know social media isn't real life. We've heard that a million times. People post highlights. We know. But knowing that intellectually doesn't always stop your nervous system from looking around and saying, everybody is moving except me. And loneliness makes that comparison louder. Because when your own life feels quiet, everybody else's life looks incredibly loud. Their engagements feel bigger. Their relationships look happier. Their friendships look closer. Their vacations look better. Their careers look more successful. And suddenly you're not simply lonely. Now you're behind. That's the part that hurts. Because loneliness starts attaching itself to a timeline. I should have this by now. I should have found someone by now. I should own that by now. I should be further in my career. I should have more friends. I should travel more. I should be happier. And now loneliness isn't just I wish somebody was here. It's something has gone wrong with the trajectory of my life. But life isn't a group project. There's no universal schedule. And there certainly isn't a leaderboard. Someone else's wedding isn't evidence that you're late. Someone else's promotion isn't evidence that you're failing. Someone else's vacation doesn't mean your Tuesday evening is meaningless. And sometimes the most meaningful seasons of our lives are incredibly unphotogenic. Nobody posts, spent six months figuring out who the fuck I am. Hashtag blessed. There's no carousel for that. No engagement photos, no resort, no champagne. Just you quietly becoming somebody different. And sometimes that quiet work matters more than anything you could post. Stop using your loneliness as evidence against yourself. Maybe that's the biggest thing I want you to take from this episode. Because being lonely does not prove that you're unlikable. Being single does not prove that you're unlovable. Having a quiet weekend doesn't mean you don't have meaningful relationships. Your friends being busy doesn't mean they stopped caring about you. Being in a season where your life looks less exciting than somebody else's doesn't mean you're behind. You're not on trial. And loneliness isn't exhibit. Because eventually I realize something else. If every quiet moment makes me desperate to find something to fill it, maybe I need to understand why being alone with myself feels so uncomfortable. What happens when there's nothing to distract me? What thoughts show up? What feelings? What desires? What grief? What dreams? What have I been avoiding because busyness gave me an excuse not to look at it? And maybe the goal isn't, how do I make sure I'm never lonely again? Maybe sometimes the question is, how do I become someone I don't mind being alone with? That's different. And I don't mean some cheesy take yourself on a date. Although honestly, take yourself on the damn date if you want to. I mean actually know yourself. What do you enjoy when nobody else gets a vote? What music do you play? What do you want your home to feel like? What do you want to eat? Where do you want to go? What do you believe? What do you want your days to look like? What parts of yourself have been neglected because you've spent so much time caring for everybody else? What makes you laugh? What makes you feel alive? What makes you feel peaceful? What makes you feel like you? Those answers matter. Ki. There's something else loneliness can do if we're not careful. It can make any company feel better than no company. And that can get expensive. Not necessarily financially, emotionally. Because when you're desperate to escape loneliness, you don't always ask, Is this person good for me? Sometimes you're just relieved somebody showed up. And there is a difference. Loneliness can make us reopen doors we worked very hard to close. It can make us answer messages we know we shouldn't answer. It can make us tolerate friendships that drain us. It can make us stay in relationships where we're technically not alone, but we have never felt lonelier. And that kind of loneliness, that's brutal. Because now somebody is sitting right next to you and you still don't feel seen. You still don't feel safe. You still don't feel understood. You still don't feel chosen. And sometimes that hurts more than an empty chair. I've learned that there are forms of company that cost more than solitude. Some people cost you peace. Some people cost you confidence. Some people cost you sleep. Some people cost you the version of yourself you worked really hard to become. And loneliness can convince you that the price is worth paying because at least somebody is there. But somebody being there isn't the same as somebody being good for you. And I think one of the hardest stages of growth is learning to tolerate temporary loneliness rather than immediately filling the space with something familiar. Because familiar isn't always healthy. Sometimes familiar is just available. Let me say that again. Sometimes familiar isn't healthy. It's just available. And when you're lonely, availability can feel a lot like connection. But they're not the same thing. Connection leaves room for you to remain yourself. Connection doesn't require you to constantly earn your place. Connection doesn't make you abandon yourself just to avoid being abandoned by someone else. And maybe one of the greatest gifts of learning how to be alone is that eventually you stop being impressed simply because somebody wants access to you. You start asking, What happens to me when this person enters my space? Do I feel peaceful? Do I feel respected? Do I feel like myself? Can I breathe? Or am I constantly anxious? Performing, overthinking, shrinking, trying to prove I'm worth keeping. Because once you've learned that solitude isn't going to kill you, you become much more selective about what you're willing to trade it for. That's powerful. The goal isn't I don't need anybody. That's armor. The goal is I want connection, but I don't need connection badly enough to abandon myself for it. That's different. And maybe that's one of the things loneliness can teach us when we stop treating it like an emergency. You can want more and appreciate what you have. And this was another lesson for me. Appreciating solitude doesn't mean pretending you don't want companionship. You can want love. You can want partnership. You can want your friends around more. You can want a fuller social life. You can want somebody sitting next to you at the end of the day. And still appreciate the life you have now. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. We have this strange habit of thinking gratitude means we have to stop wanting. It doesn't. I can appreciate the quiet and still want somebody to share it with someday. I can appreciate independence and still want support. I can appreciate having space and still occasionally say, okay, that's enough fucking space. Where is everybody? Both can be true. You don't know what somebody else envies about your life. That conversation with my friend stayed with me for another reason. It reminded me that we genuinely do not know what parts of our lives other people look at and wish they had. The person whose marriage you're envying might desperately want one quiet evening alone. The person with a huge career might want fewer people depending on them. The parent with the beautiful family photos might be exhausted. The person constantly traveling might wish they had somewhere that felt like home. The person whose calendar is full might want one blank square. Meanwhile, you're staring at your blank square thinking, nobody wants me. And they're staring at it thinking, God, I wish I could breathe. Perspective doesn't erase pain. But sometimes it helps us see that what feels like absence might also contain something valuable. What if you built a life you actually like being present for? At some point, I stopped thinking only about how to eliminate loneliness and started thinking about how to make my own life feel better. Not more impressive. Better. There's a difference. What would make my home feel good to come home to? What routines actually make me feel grounded? What do I enjoy doing when there's nobody else there to validate it? What do I want to learn? Where do I want to go? What do I want to create? What makes me laugh? What makes my body feel good? What makes me feel peaceful? And some of the answers were incredibly ordinary. Sometimes happiness really was finding my favorite snack on sale. Sometimes it was driving home with music playing. Sometimes it was lying in bed with absolutely nowhere I needed to be. Sometimes it was accomplishing something at work that nobody outside my world would ever understand. Sometimes it was having the house quiet. Sometimes it was realizing. I don't have to answer to anybody right now. And once I started appreciating those things, my life didn't suddenly become perfect. I didn't stop wanting more. I just stopped treating the present like a waiting room. That's what loneliness had sometimes made me do. I was waiting. Waiting for companionship. Waiting for the next achievement. Waiting for something exciting. Waiting for the version of my life that would finally feel complete. And meanwhile, my actual life was happening right there. Imperfect. Sometimes lonely, sometimes chaotic, sometimes boring, sometimes really fucking funny. But mine. And I don't want to spend years of my life treating today like an inconvenience I have to endure until something better arrives. I want to be here for it. Because maybe the goal isn't to build a life that looks so full nobody could possibly imagine you're lonely. Maybe the goal is to build a life that still feels like yours when nobody else is in the room. I don't believe every difficult season needs to become some profound life lesson. Sometimes life just sucks. But I do think there are seasons we understand differently once we're on the other side of them. And I think loneliness can be one of those. Sometimes life gets quieter. People get busy. Relationships change. Children grow. Jobs change. Friendships shift. You change. And suddenly there's space where there used to be noise. Our first instinct can be to feel it immediately. New relationship, new hobby, new work, more shopping, more scrolling, more plans. Anything so we don't have to feel the emptiness. But maybe before we fill every empty space, we should sit in some of it. Not forever. Just long enough to ask, what can I hear now that everything is quiet? Maybe you'll hear grief. Maybe anger. Maybe exhaustion. Maybe you'll realize you're lonely because you've been disconnected from yourself for a long time. Maybe you'll discover something you love. Maybe you'll realize you actually enjoy your own company more than you thought. Maybe you'll rest. Maybe you'll create something. Maybe you'll finally admit that you want your life to change. Maybe you'll discover that your life doesn't need as much changing as you thought. If you're in a lonely season right now, I don't want to tell you to be grateful for it. Sometimes that advice feels insulting when you're hurting. I won't tell you that everything happens for a reason. I won't tell you your person is right around the corner. I won't tell you to just love yourself more and suddenly you'll never need anybody. We need people. Connection matters. Love matters. Community matters. But I will tell you this your loneliness is not proof that something is wrong with you. It isn't proof that you're awkward. It isn't proof that you're unlikable. It isn't proof that you're difficult. It isn't proof that everyone else figured out life and you didn't. And it sure as hell isn't proof that you're unlovable. Maybe this season isn't a punishment. Maybe some of this empty space is simply space. And before you rush to fill every inch of it, look around. Get to know the person who's sitting there with you. Ask her what she needs. Ask her what she likes. Ask her what she's been too busy to notice. Ask her what she wants. And maybe little by little you'll realize being alone and being abandoned are not the same thing. Being alone and being unwanted are not the same thing. Being alone and being unloved are not the same thing. Sometimes you're simply in a quieter chapter. And maybe there's something here worth hearing. I still like people. I still want connection. And Amazon still unfortunately knows entirely too much about me. But I've learned not to treat every quiet room like something went wrong. Sometimes the quiet room is where you finally meet yourself. And maybe you discover you actually like her. So stay rooted in who you are. Keep rising into who you're becoming. And please, before you emotionally shop on Amazon tonight, take my previous advice and leave it in the cart for at least 24 hours. Because loneliness is not a curse, but same-day delivery can absolutely become a financial problem. Take care.