I’ll get to the writer part in a bit, but I guess you would say that I’m lonely, but it’s kind of a contradictory loneliness.
The thing is, I’m not someone with many interests, and I’m not someone who likes most other people. I don’t dislike things or people, so it’s more of an apathy or disinterest. In fact you could say that I have intentionally chosen to be alone, because I don’t like people thinking that we’re friends or close, and getting stuck in pointless relationships.

But in the end, even I want someone I can be close to and care about. A lot of the time I ignore it and pretend I’m find on my own, but I feel like it’s starting to be a problem.

I feel like I’ve got some kind of unconscious mindset or rule that’s made me like this. I think the idea is if you don’t care about many things, the things you do care about mean so much more to you. Translating to people, if you don’t care about many people, those few people you find who you do care about mean so much more to you. It comes down to things having meaning, where it’s like I can’t accept anything that doesn’t have such a high level of meaning.

But on to writing. One of the few interests I do have is stories, or at least things within that general area. It’s why I like anime and how I ended up here. I write stories, shorter ones in the past and now spend time focusing on larger scale series, hoping to end up with my own novel series one day.

I’m not a very good writer though, for a few reasons. For starters, I’m a very unmotivated and even lazy, person, so even things like this that I do care about are hard for me to get started.

But I feel like loneliness plays a part in this too. Rather than feeling like I’m bad at writing stories and creating worlds, instead it feels like I’m good at what I can do but am missing important pieces/factors that are required for something like this, like visuals, for example. I don’t know why but I never picture anything in the world, like my memory is creatively/visually blind. This goes from what the characters look like to the world itself, and becomes even harder to work with when writing a series that has different creatures that I designed and put thought into, but have very little as far as their appearance goes.

But the things I’m missing vary and are always present. It makes me wonder if I’m involuntarily limiting myself so that I have to rely on outside help, because the simple (yet extremely unlikely) solution is to find someone who has the half I am missing. It was something that I’ve always been thinking about, and dreaming of really, that I would just meet the perfect person, an artist, who I could get close to and care about, working on my stories and worlds with.
This is probably just a delusion though, because it could be that I’m just not good at it or don’t put enough effort in or something. Either way I can’t help but love the idea of having a partner. I can’t imagine any other kind of mutual interest I would have with someone that I would get close to.

Anyway, wouldn’t be as big a problem if I wrote smaller scale stories, but all my main ideas are for really long series with worlds that I will be expanding upon for a very long time. I guess I have this thing when it comes to the characters in these stories, where it feels like they’re real. Think of how you would feel if you got to a point where your story just ends, and you will never have anymore. But the idea of working with someone makes plenty of sense, making it harder to ignore.

It’s just that this world of stories that I write is like my safe haven. It’s a place where I actually care about things, and can pretend my life has meaning and that I’ll accomplish something significant, not to the world but to me. It’s not a place where I want to bring just anyone. Only someone who I truly care about I would let into this world, so I’ve closed it off to the rest of the world, having no way of knowing who I should let enter, if there is anyone.

In the end it feels like I’m not making any progress with anything. It feels like I have no time because of the time I spend working and around other people outside of work. I mean, I’ve saved up a lot of hours so I can take time off if I wanted, but I haven’t had any reason to.

If you read this far then thank you. I feel like this was more of a rant than asking for help or advice. I feel like these will all go the same, there will be people out there with good intentions saying that we should be friends or something. In this way I’m a gambler, because it’s not like I have any way of knowing whether they really are the one or not. But it’ll probably always end the same way.

I can highly relate to everything you've said. I also have trouble imagining things, characters` faces,events and lots of details. That's why it's really hard for me to write storied but when i imagine myself as the main character, things get easier to imagine and slowly i can expand my thoughts and imagination..
Maybe you can put yourself in the place of one of the characters.

That's actually a method that I use.

I have a hard time when it comes to creating story narratives, characters and settings. I enjoy stories with a passion, whether they be in book, movie and television or even video game format. A story is a good way to entertain, raise spirits and perhaps even motivate oneself. I've always wanted to work for a video game company as a writer who helps to create the next groundbreaking series.

I have a lot of stories that play around in my head, but in the end, like dull blades, I don't have a way of sharpening or refining them.

One of the things I like to do is use people from the world around me, including myself, in place of the main characters. It's a daydream that keeps me entertained when I'm at work or even bored at home, given that I live alone now. Sometimes I listen to music, and I create scenarios that fit the songs perfectly.

And as for having difficulty with motivation and forming attachments with people, I honestly understand that feeling, if not to a degree, at least.

I have limited connections to people. There is a very short list of people that I feel like I can truly say understand me. I live alone now after a break up, and I find that being alone is something I've wanted for a while now. I feel free to express myself more, and I feel at ease now that I focus only on me. But despite this newfound "freedom," I actually feel more alone than ever, which bothers me.

One of my favorite movie quotes, and 10 points to you if you know where it's from, is "I'm alone, but I'm not lonely." I try to live by the quote, and I try to make that who I am, and be someone who can say that I'm fine being alone, and that in the end I'll be stronger for it.

But at the same time it's hard to not wish that I can find someone, on a romantic level, that can truly understand how I think and feel, and is accepting of it, and I can understand and accept them. I feel like I'll be happier if I find that "perfect" person, but then I feel stupid for thinking about it because I tell myself that my time alone will make me better, so just stay alone for now and worry about love and relationships later.

So your contradictory loneliness, to me at least, makes perfect sense, given that I feel that way a lot too.

Also, I apologize for a long response. If you read this far, I hope it was at least a decent read.

>>2 Thank you for the reply. I don’t know if this method would work though, because even if I’m visualising it from their point of view, I still struggle to visualise the rest of the world and see what it looks like.

>>3 It’s replies like this that honestly scare me. I need to remember that we will never see everything when it comes to posts like this. We’re just two anonymous people who happened to have something about us that overlap. If I were more desperate I wouldn’t be surprised if I just thought that you were “the one”, so I’m glad that I can still see things realistically.
But that’s the problem with really wanting something like this, you end up having a messed up perception of things, and have different biases preventing you from seeing clearly. If it goes so long without finding anything, you get impatient and might think that anything decently close to what you were looking for is exactly it. There’s also technically the reverse of it, where if you always find out that it’s not what you were looking for then you just assume everything will end up that way, in which you could just walk right past the perfect one/thing you were after.

But from what I read it sounds like you really did understand the kinds of things that I’m going through. I don’t believe anyone can truly understand anyone, especially just from a single post, but if anything you probably exist in a similar world to me.

The real world is very different to on here. Online you have ways of narrowing everyone down, and finding people more similar to you, but in the real world it’s simply who happens to exist near you. Irl I find myself surrounded by people who have pretty much nothing in common with me, where I exist in a completely different world to them, so I probably have even less connections than you do. I became very reserved and don’t talk much, because any attempts of being friends with anyone always end up very fake and aren’t real.

This concept of being alone but not lonely is how I wish I was, and how I used to think I was. It would just make things so much simpler, because finding someone you care about seems like something you’re meant to find when you’re not looking for it. When you’re truly apathetic, then if you don’t find it then it doesn’t matter. I guess a problem with this kind of character is that it only works if something like a story or true friend ends up coming to you, because otherwise you just find yourself with nothing, as time goes on and you don’t. I realise I’m getting this mixed up. This name I’m using I’ve used for a while, and only just remembered how relevant this character is to this kind of conversation. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but the anime is called Nabari no ou, with Miharu as the main character.

But as far as being lonely but not alone goes, I feel like it would make things simpler from a writing point of view. If I could just write something on my own, and have something like that to show what I’m like, then it would be easier to find someone to help me. But without having much completed or accomplished, and without being able to show the unfinished projects I’m working on, all people have to go off of are a couple of posts like this.

A few years ago I used to have my own little way of describing myself. It sounded coll at the time, but I used to say that I was lonely in a crowd. Figured I’d throw that in there.

To be honest, I’m not someone that ever really understood how romance and that stuff works. Things like dating, flirting, and even the physical side of it seem like a seperate little game that people play, that doesn’t actually have anything to do with caring about someone. If you take it away, then what’s the difference between having a true friend, and having a girlfriend/boyfriend?

But yeah, thanks for reading. I prefer long replies anyway, and as you can see mine aren’t exactly the shortest. I’m not sure what the point of this all is, but at least I can have my little glimpse of hope or happiness, or whatever it’s called.