Carpathia

This is a good topic, thanks for starting it.

I felt alone even when I wasn't alone. In recovery I'm discovering how overblown my expectations were for companionship and friendship.

It completely overwhelmed me. I didn't understand the concept of give and take.

There was no "easy does it".

Every interaction, it seemed, was fraught with anxiety and tension (people-pleasing, putting on a show, etc.), even toward my closest family members. Alcohol to the rescue.

But alcohol couldn't help me solve the aloneness, the apartness, I felt. And no amount of human contact could do it for me, either.

Only following a program of recovery has helped me. It's taken patient sober time for me to find a balanced place of being okay with who I am in relation to myself, firstly, and then, to being okay with who I am in relation to others.