When Do You Feel Most Lonely?

This one is a fairly short one, but I thought I'd ask a question of people for once. When do you feel most lonely? Because the thing is, for me, I feel most alone in a crowd. That might seem a bit ridiculous, but hear me out.

When you're by yourself, you can't connect to anyone. You're by yourself. You expect to be alone, and you are. And you get a bit lonely here and there, but it's not usually too bad.

But when you're in a crowd, when you're amongst other people - well, there's so many people to connect to! Surely, one of them will connect with you, right? Surely, someone will....no....oh, okay then....

That's why I feel most alone in a crowd, or in a room of people, or at a lot of events. Most of the time, I'm sitting or standing by myself, and everyone else is talking to someone. And I wonder what it is they've got that I haven't. How do they do it?

It's relatively simple, of course. They connect. They talk. They interact. I do that as well, but it usually feels a lot more - pointed, than it should be. It feels like it should be spontaneous and natural. But with me, it's more like a list in my head. "Okay, I need to talk to this person about this, and this person about that, and it would be nice to talk to that person," but inevitably, each of them is already talking. It would be rude to interrupt. But I don't want to just sit in one spot. I'm terrible at keeping still - well, I'm okay at it, but I like to move around. So I do, until someone is free. Then I hope I can dive in before someone else does....

That's not what conversation always is for me, of course. It depends very much on the context. The above is fairly typical for me after church, for instance. Not so much at my new church as yet, because I don't know anyone much well enough to talk to them! Guess that's the point of talking to them.....oh, yes, for those who haven't heard as yet, I'm at a new church now. Not because I didn't like the old one. I rather do. Just a bit of a new direction for a season - not sure how long a season. We'll see as we go. But at present, I'm leading the music for the evening service over at Cobbitty Anglican. Lovely old church. Very old, actually. Heritage listed. Beautiful building. Good people, too. Always nice.

Anyway. Yes. Conversation, interaction. All that sort of thing. Feeling lonely in a crowd. So. Not sure if that's just a me thing, or an Aspie thing, or actually somewhat broader. So thought I'd ask around! When do you feel most alone/lonely? Would love to get your thoughts :)