No one really talks about how lonely it is to wake up.
Not in the poetic, romanticised way.
But the kind of lonely that creeps in quietly—
when you realise you don’t relate to the people around you anymore.
When small talk feels exhausting.
And you start questioning whether you’ve changed too much…
or if they were never really your people to begin with.
You don’t mean to pull away.
It just happens.
The conversations that used to fill you now feel hollow.
The spaces that once felt safe now leave you buzzing, overstimulated, or just… sad.
It’s not that you think you’re better.
It’s that you’re different now.
And no one really prepares you for how much that difference can ache.
It wasn’t one big moment that changed everything.
It was subtle. Quiet.
A news segment.
Some numbers that didn’t add up.
A growing feeling in my gut that what we were being told… wasn’t the full truth.
I remember saying, “They’re making this worse than it actually is,” and the looks I got—
the side-eyes, the awkward laughs, the dismissive “Well, I don’t know, I’m just saying what so-and-so said…”
That was when I started feeling it:
The gap. The distance between the way I see the world and the way most people choose to see it.
Small talk became the default.
Not just in passing—but in friendships too.
“What you been up to?”
“Nice weather, isn’t it?”
Conversations that used to feel like connection now feel like code-switching.
I have to filter my thoughts—keep it light, material, surface-level.
Because going deeper might risk judgment. Might cost me something.
Around people who haven’t started waking up, I shrink a little.
Not out of shame, but survival.
I censor myself.
I speak from their world instead of mine.
Because when you speak from your world—the world you see so clearly now—it makes people uncomfortable.
And that breaks my heart a bit, every time.
That’s why I write.
Because here, I don’t have to shrink.
I can say it all.
When I do try to speak up, the response is usually the same:
“What can we do?”
“We just have to get on with it.”
I know those words are just a way of shutting down the conversation.
But my mind doesn’t stop asking.
What can we do?
What I crave now isn’t just closeness.
It’s resonance.
I want connection with someone who sees what I see—
who feels the imbalance in the world and isn’t afraid to talk about it.
That’s why the rare aligned conversations feel like medicine.
Like the ones I’ve had with a certain friend, where time disappears and the energy lifts.
We might not have all the answers…
But we both know something’s off.
And we both believe something has to change.
Whispers of the Forest 
Leave a comment