Becoming a recluse.

Today, a realization hit me out of nowhere. With every passing day, I am becoming a recluse, a hermit if you will. And I do not mind it at all.

I have started finding it extremely difficult to fit in. In all the places around me, and all the people that surround me, I cannot help but feel like an outsider. It always feels like I am standing outside this circle. A circle I am not privy to, and just looking and observing.

Even if I am included, I find myself not having anything to contribute. Which again leaves me standing in a corner. With all these voices surrounding me, going on and on about things that don’t resonate with me.

It makes me feel like a part of a puzzle that I do not belong in, but have been added to the box by mistake. It becomes overwhelming quickly, and I feel like drowning in a sea I never even jumped in.

Which also makes me avoid society at any given chance, even when the chance is not there, I try to make it happen by burying my head in a book, or mostly running away to the nearest quiet place. Mostly, I run to my room, my safe haven, but that is not how it should be. Or at least I think that’s not how it should be.

Whenever I am surrounded by people, I often end up needing a breather, a break of sorts, and now it is happening even in the company of the people I love. Even the ones I desperately need in my life, I end up disappearing on them, and that is the saddest part of it all.

It’s not that I feel like an outsider just around people, this feeling is very inwardly too. For I do not feel like myself in my own skin. I feel disassociated with my own self to the point that I stand in front of a mirror and wonder who am I looking at? Who am I looking for? Is it truly me looking back at me?

I wonder who this person is, if not all the previous identities attached to her. Has it really been that I always lived for everyone around me, and I never even learned how to live for myself? Or even by myself at this point.

As much as I love being alone now, it is still very difficult when you have been surrounded by people all your life. To the point of attaching yourself to one person after another, just so that I am not alone. But now I seek that loneliness, that quiet, that detachment.

It brings me immense comfort. It makes me feel safe and makes me feel protected. I constantly feel unsafe around people. The fear of judgment, of being scrutinized, being talked about, and the fears I cannot even name take hold of me, seeping into my bones.

Becoming a recluse helped me, protected me, and saved me in ways that I cannot explain. Even today, it is how I feel safe, and according to my therapist, that should be my number one priority.

For once, I feel safe, in my own skin and bones, everything else will follow, and that is the hope I am holding onto with all my might.

And I am proud to say I am working on it. I am trying my best every day to be a recluse in moderation, even if I love it so much. So here’s to becoming a recluse while I am on this journey of self-discovery.

With the hope that I will come out stronger and a better version of myself.