All my life, I've had this compulsion to cut off most of everyone I know and go live a life of eternal solitude.  I've done it just once, and it was not that long ago. It wasn't a snap of the fingers, but rather a gradual process of drifting away from the people I talked to on the regular. I can't pinpoint when it started, but it was around the time I graduated from college.

College was, frankly, an amazing period of my life; I had control over my own schedule, I felt like I was becoming a knowledgeable and capable person, I had made a couple of friends, and it was so easygoing. Towards the end, though, I was suffering from major burnout. Every day, I'd wake up and do classwork for 6 or 8 hours, and by then I was taking online classes, so I was cooped up at home. Once I graduated, I spent what I think was the next 6 months of my life doing almost nothing. I woke up, played video games, and watched videos until 2 am, went to sleep, and so on. College had already conditioned me to put friends on the back burner, and that didn't change during that period.

Aside from the gaming, there was just a bit more going on with my life. I had a lot of free time as a NEET and, having a previous interest in it, decided to dive into philosophy and ethics. Of course, this just meant a lot of YouTube videos about these topics, not exactly the deepest or most academic sources of information, but up until then, I'd only perused philosophy in my head or otherwise sporadically. My world and understanding of the world completely changed. I was introduced to the various types of ethics (virtue, deontology, consequentialism) as well as socialism and more nuanced political theory. I also became a full-swing atheist, having been persuaded that this was the only life there was, and that there is no god.

This existential and philosophical revolution in my mind couldn't have come at a worse time. The election was coming up. I think, like many people, finding out that a large part of the population still considered Trump a legitimate candidate was incredibly shocking and disappointing. My family was part of that large part of the population. I remember the day I found out; I was so angry I started throwing shit at the wall. My family tried to reassure me it was JUST because of the economy. This did not reassure me about my likely loss of rights in my head. I was put at odds with my family.

More time passed, and of course, the dickhead was put into power. The first few months were incredibly rough; I got into a lot of arguments with my family at the time. It didn't matter what proof of his incompetence, malice, or evil I showed them; they kept doubling down. Maybe I could live with it. I eventually learned it was just better to coexist with my family than go to war with them over politics. This arrangement left me embittered; however, the feeling of betrayal remained. The peace didn't last long. Charlie Kirk was assassinated. The tables turned after I remarked I didn't feel too bad for the guy in the family group chat. Now my family was blowing up my phone every day about what I had said, and we argued endlessly. There were a few tense screaming matches. This too faded, but for the second time that year, my world had been shaken and changed. The people I thought I could trust, who I thought were reasonable and had a good conscience, did not.

So, I drifted from my family, too. I still haven't talked to one of my brothers today because of the things he said to me. My descent into loneliness wasn't over yet, though. It was time for me to finally get off my ass and do something with my life. In those previous months, my partner had moved states, and he really wanted me to move in with him. So, after much procrastination, I did. Little did I know that my life was going to get flipped upside down, over and over. It all started with the ill omen of my partner being fired from his job the day I was catching my flight. Long story short, I ended up living on someone's couch, working a terrible, toxic job, and hating life. This was the peak of my loneliness. I didn't talk to friends anymore; I couldn't connect with anyone, in real life or online. All I had was my partner. This isn't to suggest at all that my partner isn't enough for me; he certainly is. However, you need more than just a partner to keep you afloat; you need friends and interaction.

It was only about a month into living on a couch that I realized I had a deep loneliness problem. It had been so long since I had been actively keeping up with friends, so long since I had a proper personal conversation with somebody or hung out with them. I was alone in a hostile environment, and my last connection to humanity lived two hours away. It may come as no surprise, but such little healthy human contact does things to you. I realized at a certain point that I had completely forgotten how to interact with other human beings. This meant it would be incredibly difficult to get out of this pit. The idea of making new friends or reconnecting with old ones was terrifying. I desperately tried to connect with fellow human beings on the internet, but it was to no avail. No one was interested in getting to know me. Who could blame them? Who wants to be friends with an unsocialized, lonely, and desperate freak?

If you're reading this, though, chances are, you are one of my friends, so you can figure I got out of this eventually. Shit had to change before it got better. I moved into my own apartment, and my partner moved in shortly thereafter. After one of the most stressful and tense weeks of my life, I left my terrible job and started a new one. Around this time, I had fallen into a period of self-discovery, and I was starting to come to my senses.

I won't name names, but there was this girl on the internet who I thought was cool. Like super cool. She seemed like she had shit figured out and had an authentic, interesting life. There was a part of me that deeply wanted to be her friend because I wanted to be as authentic as she was.  Before you start to worry, this isn't some incel or stalker shit. My partner encouraged me to get out of my shell and be brave- I should try to befriend someone. So, I did, it was awkward, and it was terrifying. But it worked. As it turned out, we had a decent number of common interests, and there seemed to be a nice synergy between us. We became friends.

This was the point at which I finally exited my deep loneliness. I reconnected with old friends who were willing to forgive my borderline ghosting of them. Not only that though, my one friend opened a lot of doors for me; I made more friends. It probably helped a lot that I had gotten a new job that put me in a very good mood and made me a lot less hopeless.

TThe moral of the story? If you're thinking of cutting everyone off and becoming a permanent ghost, don't. I had always dreamed and considered it. Once I had fallen into it, though, it ruined me for a while, and there was horrible despair.

Addendum

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the one friend I did make during the period of my loneliness. The beginning of our friendship was frankly bizarre, and I will not share details for the sake of their privacy and my humility. What was important was that I stumbled into a relationship in which I could test the waters for connecting with other human beings. We had a mutual understanding of each other's situations, which made for a low-judgment environment. I still fondly remember the times we'd text each other well past when we'd normally be going to sleep. Unfortunately, the relationship did sort of peter out, especially around the time things were getting the worst at my job. We are still friends now, but I wish we had talked more.