About this loneliness

I am writing to you from a city 1,800 miles away from where I live. Before the pandemic, I traveled all through the year for my job, and loved it. I would take care of business in 1-2 days, then stay at an Air BnB or similar for, say, another 10 days. Since I can work anywhere, I just worked wherever I was, met the people, drove around on motorcycles, and just enjoyed the world.

During this trip, I really got in touch with my loneliness for the first time. I used to think if you were lonely, you were a loser. But I went to rehab last year for 2 months and, among other things, discovered loneliness was just a feeling, like any feeling that doesn't feel good and you have to manage without hurting yourself or anyone else.

And fapping, the way I do it, IS hurting yourself because you're empty afterward - you've accomplished nothing. Sometimes your damned dick isn't even hard. It's compulsive, it's OCD, your brain thinks you'll feel better if you do it, and you don't. And of course, you are ashamed.

I am flying back today to an empty apartment on a small street in a small town far, far away from everything. I have wanted to move since I got there in 2014, but my job unfortunately doesn't pay what it paid ten years ago, and it takes money to move. I had a death in the family two years ago and was left enough money to live for about three years if I stopped working, which of course I won't do because I love my job, which is why I stayed in the field despite its being decimated since 2008, all employees laid off and brought back with no benefits or medical.

Before the pandemic, I had been traveling to different cities to see if I wanted to live there, and start my life over. I have not had a permanent home since Sept. 2012. It was exciting and romantic at first, now, not so exciting. This hotel I am staying at has 20 foot ceilings and is two huge rooms. Back home, I live in a very small space and tell myself it's fine, but it's not fine - I am like a rat in a cage, I don't like it, I have never liked it and blast it, I am going to get out of there before the summer now that the world is opening up. Slightly.

I have had to learn to manage my loneliness as well as my daily thoughts of suicide, but I have had those thoughts since I was 5. Please do not be alarmed, I absolutely will not do it, not now - maybe when I'm, like, 70. It's just an obsession, like obsession with masturbating or looking at girls online.

If you meet me in person or look at my Insta or FB pages, you will see a person full of energy and fun, climbing trees, playing and singing (I'm a musician/producer/performer) and posting zero complaints - just things that, hopefully, will make someone smile for a moment and forget their pain.

But I must quote the great John Lennon: "Although I laugh and I act like a clown/Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown."

And so what? Managing loneliness means making my own fun, and I have laughs throughout the day, and have learned to entertain myself at night while seeking dates on line and seeing that crash and burn, and to try, try again. I obsess over an old girlfriend I broke up with in 2017, young, beautiful, smart, and funny, but in another city and neither one of us was willing to move to the others' town, hers because it's desolate, mine because she grew up where I live and she didn't want to go backwards.

She, unlike my other girlfriends and ex-wife, said "No contact" and I honor that, although I think about her every day. My mother thought we should get married.

I have not had sex since August 2019, and I have not been touched physically since Oct. 2020. I don't like this but it won't kill me. There are no people in my town, is why. I have plenty of girlfriends on line, but I'm finished with long-distance relationships, and spending hundreds of dollars to fly and see someone. So there I am, not touching myself, and no cuddles and no bangin'. So be it, other guys go through it - guys in jail, guys off to war, guys who don't have the social skills to make it happen with a woman, or whatever the reason.

I just wanted to give others going through this some hope, it's possible to come out the other side. I make music for hours, as I must to keep up my level of skill, and the pandemic has allowed me time to do that. I wrote my first book between June 25 and January 3, now I edit the proposal before sending it off to my agent, who is a great agent who has me over his house and whose other clients are on the best-seller lists. Hope hope hope.

I have hope that things will change. I am making the effort. And one day I will have another beloved to have and hold and share a life with, and she will not have to come up to an office door and hear me in there chatting, or to know that I'm looking at chicks on the web in order to avoid intimacy.

One final word-

There is a sign on my front door at home, made for me by a young woman I met in rehab. One line reads:

"Your loneliness has nothing to do with your worth as a person."

What a concept!

See you back home. I am glad I found this place and am finally taking this shit seriously!