I Have Not Learnt a Thing

As I sit here on my sofa once more, scrolling through Netflix and playing the occasional game of 'Golf Clash', it's struck me harder than ever before.

I'm lonely.

At 27 years old, one is supposed to be in the prime of one's life, experiencing new things, travelling around and seeing the world outside. But I can't bring myself to open the door. I don't know what to do, how to do it and frankly, I have no one to do it with. For someone who is perceived to be popular, friendly and easy-going, not only do I have very few friends, (I'd say I have one genuine friend), I have no skills to go out and make new ones.

I have a lot of "Twitter friends". Online friends, some of whom come to me for advice, a lot of whom I share my thoughts and my life with, and this is fine but still, I haven't moved from my sofa. I'm still scared to open the door.

One of said Twitter friends told me to go out to a local bar. Fine, but then what? Walk up to someone and say hello? Then what? It seemed so easy to make friends as a child, so why is it difficult now? It dawned on me that the friends of years gone past have merely been pub friends, acquaintances who you see when intoxicated; a life where everyone is your friend. But in the cold light of day, I'm still here sitting on my sofa. The only person I've seen all week is my Mum.

Part of me resents this. Part of me wants to stand up and scream and ask the world where it is. I want someone to grab me by the collar and drag me along to something. Anything. I guess it's the curse of the depressive.

"I want company yet I want to be alone." The twisted and nonsensical existence we try and navigate. Maybe it's my existence that is the issue. Maybe I really am too much like hard work? Maybe my old persona has been replaced by a hard-hitting, difficult and negative persona that people don't want to be around anymore and I just haven't realised? For it is true, I have grown to be more outspoken, opinionated and combative; being more vocal about things. I constantly feeling like I'm fighting against something. Maybe that puts people off?

Unless we're all sitting on our sofas waiting for everyone else...

I'd like to think I'm not naive. People move on and build their own lives; built with romantic partners instead of "mates". People go out on dates and spend evenings in each other's arms without the necessity for third wheels. Obviously not everyone is in that boat, but in my extensive attempts to be sociable this evening, I have been batted back.

"I'm with my girlfriend tonight."
"I'm out with work."
"I can't do tonight."

All genuine reasons no doubt, but when did I miss the experience roadshow? Did the seminar of adult life pass me by in a blitz of alcohol fuelled psychosis and I've come out the other side expecting it to be like I'm 19 again? Maybe deep down I don't want to grow up. I don't want responsibility. Maybe adult life isn't for me.

Remind me, how do I make friends?

I have three options here. I can blame myself. I can blame the mental illness I once had, (and arguably still do), or I can blame everyone else.

I blame myself.

I blame myself for taking the easy way out. For quitting university, for quitting Australia, for giving up too easily when opportunities to build a new life came my way; routes that could have led me down a completely different path. Decisions that have left me with some sort of agoraphobia which make everything worse. I blame myself for not taking plunges into new worlds, for making up reasons why I couldn't go on dates and for not going to places.

I've been taking the easy road for too long and now I NEED to change something in my life, I don't have the tools to do it.

Move to a new city, try my hand at something completely new, tackle that university degree I flaked upon, take up a new sport. All agreeable tactics; for we're always told that if something is wrong, go out and change it. I am now scared of my own reaction to a change. I am stuck in the mud, as if leaving my bubble of isolation will expose me to a new disease, or an old one that comes back.

I blame myself for my loneliness.

Now I'm too far gone. I don't see a path back. I can't see a Tom that's happy and in a relationship, a Tom who goes to Winter Wonderland with friends, or a Tom who goes down the pub for a couple of pints. All I see is a Tom sat on the sofa; a Tom with a social media addiction and a remote control. I've lost the ability to be sociable. Isolationism is the only existence I see, for I'm scared of anything else, and it's an existence that will make this worse.

That door to the outside world feels a long, long way away, and I'm not sure how much longer I can live like this.