It’s currently 4 o’clock. I’ve been at the library for less than 40 minutes, and so far I’ve moved rooms at least 4 or 5 times. Admittedly, that would be frustrating  at the best of times, but the real reason why I’ve become the personification of musical chairs is making me feel even worse: I’m embarrassed to be seen writing this.

And honestly, that is an awful feeling. I’m not the type to get embarrassed easily; I wear hideously bright PJs to seminars more than is probably (definitely) acceptable, so shame is clearly not a thing I’m familiar with. And yet, right now, I’m terrified that a complete stranger will glance over at my screen and read this one sentence: I’m surrounded by people, and yet I’ve never felt more alone. Why I find that so hard to admit, I’m not so sure, but it’s taken a lot from me to get to this point.

To clarify, I realise that despite my tortured teen angst, everyone gets lonely some times. Loneliness is just an emotion on the spectrum, as with every other feeling we experience in life.  It even has its value, because it helps us appreciate the connections we do make in life. For me, loneliness only really became a problem when it stopped being an emotion I felt every now and again, and started becoming a part of who I was – which admittedly sounds very dramatic when there are people suffering out there more than I likely ever will, but is also the only way I can describe it. The feeling wasn’t immediate, but somewhere along the way I went from thinking of myself as a person to specifically a lonely person. It was if I just couldn’t shake the adjective.

Perhaps it’s because University is presented as a wonderland for those of us who are no-longer-a-child-but-not-quite-adults-either. Freedom of expression, free thought, without limit or responsibility: we’re taught that the years spent at university are some of the best of our lives. We have all the freedom of an adult (with little of the responsibility) and all the free time of a kid. With a world of societies at University, for just about everything you can think of, it should in theory be easy to keep busy and make friends. After all, you may be a small fish in a big pond, but you know that someone out there will like the same things as you.

In fact, feeling alone when we are surrounded by sports teams, university societies, house mates and course mates is even worse. I felt like admitting to it would mean that people would think I was lame (yes, really), and that they would treat me differently. In my own head I was already a lost cause, doomed to always feel lonely; I figured that if I couldn’t feel happy in a group of friends, where could I? The cycle of feeling so alone that I didn’t think anyone would ever understand, leading to me feeling more lonely, to that making me feel even more that no one would understand – ironic now with distance, painful at the time – certainly didn’t give me any confidence it would get better.

Before it happened to me, I didn’t even realise that you could feel the way I’d been feeling and be surrounded by people. That was very ignorant of me. I realise now that you can have friends and still feel lonely. You can have excellent friends in fact, as I do, and still feel the way I have. Through it all, I know that there are people who have stuck by me. These are the people in my life that I am eternally grateful for. I know I could go to them with a problem and that they would listen. This was actually part of the reason why it took me so long to come to terms with it all: I felt guilty for feeling so isolated when I knew that there were people out there who cared for me. By admitting to what I was going through, I thought my friends would see it as their fault, or worse, not understand and just pity me. I couldn’t bear either option so I kept how I felt to myself.

I genuinely didn’t think there was a single young person around me who could understand how I felt. In my mind, long-term loneliness didn’t really happen to young people. Hear the word lonely and you conjure up images of an elderly person sat on their own at home. At face value this is not an unfair assumption to make; according to recent research commissioned by AgeUK, 1.2 million older people in the UK are lonely. But it is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2010, the Mental Health Foundation found that in general, the younger you are, the more likely you are to feel alone often. Of all age groups, those aged 18-34 were more likely to have felt depressed due to their loneliness.

That in part is likely due to social media. You only have to load up Facebook to be greeted by pictures of people you know surrounded by friends, or at a party, or a some other event. At times Facebook becomes less social networking, and more a way for us to prove to others that we are social. I even went back on my own Facebook to investigate this, and to be honest I seem like quite a sociable person myself. Turns out, it’s quite easy to smile for a picture and look like you’re having the best time in the world, even if you’re a bit numb to it all.

That being said, it’s not that only cause. I’ve always been a proponent of technology. It’s too easy to say that technology alone has caused a generation of disconnected people. With the Internet, I can stay in contact with friends all around the world. Letters may be a thoughtful way to communicate, but they aren’t practical. Case in point: one of my friends whom I love dearly lives in Sweden. With the click of a button, I can instantly send her a picture that reminds me of her,  or keep updated with what’s going on in her life. I can’t do that without technology, and I’m grateful for that ability.

It’s hard to know what causes loneliness, or even who is lonely. Despite how common it is, loneliness manifests itself in different ways. No two people feel or act the same way when they’re feeling isolated. I talk about chronic loneliness as if it were an illness. It’s not, but it does affect your life all the same. For me, I found that the lonelier I was, the less confident I became too. When you feel lonely no matter what you do, and the only constant in the equation is you, it’s hard not let that bleed into how you feel about yourself. At my worst I felt truly pathetic, paranoid that I was wearing my loneliness like a sign on my forehead. I was so embarrassed about it all that I couldn’t face talking about it, so I hid. I think I thought that it would make me feel better, that if I was on my own to begin with I wouldn’t notice being “alone” when I was in a group as much. Naturally, that only made things worse. I’d sit in my bedroom and cry at how sad I felt, trying to keep quiet so that my flatmates wouldn’t hear me. Every time I thought I’d hit my peak of misery, the floor would shift and I’d find a new rock bottom. It’s only really been in the past few weeks that I can have days go by without feeling like things will never get better.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the take-home message of this should be. Truth is, I don’t think there is one, or at least one I’m qualified to give. I didn’t “find” myself by coming out at the other end, or have any epiphanies about the world at large. I am different, but definitely not better or wiser for it. Really, this whole thing isn’t about why I felt so lonely in the first place, just that I did. So here it is: this year I went from feeling ok, to miserable, to really miserable and then somewhere in between. I wouldn’t say I’m at the other end now, but I’m far enough along to know that there is an end, which is enough. I guess that’s something I’ve learnt from it all after all.

Which is why I’m here now, still in the library, still hiding from strangers, still struggling to write this. I’ve never been one for baring my soul for the whole world to pick apart. I’m quite private, and also a bit too cynical for it all normally – so if there’s anyone reading this thinking that I’m a complete wet wipe for writing this, fair enough. Who knows, I might’ve thought the same thing if the roles were reversed. But I hope if you’re reading this and feeling like I’ve taken your thoughts and written them down, you know that there are people out there who feel the same. I’d urge you to tell someone you trust, and I wish I’d been honest with myself earlier, because I could’ve fixed it sooner if I had. No one deserves to feel alone.