Being surrounded by people does not eliminate the feeling of loneliness. You keep surrounding yourself with people in order to fill the void, but it does not seem to be working. New people every day, new, different, and interesting but the loneliness remains. To give up or to keep on trying? According to common knowledge, it takes 28 days to establish a new behavioural pattern.
I was alone for 9 months, concentrating on studying. My family and acquaintances were left behind in another country. Being lonely did not bother me in a way to create the feeling on loneliness. But now, once back home and among family and friends, I feel lonelier than when I was alone.
What seems to be missing is a purpose to wake up - I lost it by not having deadlines every day, every week, and by not consuming articles and books on a daily basis. What is still missing is the bigger picture, but I will get there. What the experience in the US gave was an understanding of a couple of fields I am interested in - international human rights law, criminal law, theory, and criminology, sociology of deviance, mental health law, and neuropsychology. And recycling and reducing food waste.
Small, empty conversations seem to irritate, unless they are satirical and include some amount of black humour. But existential conversations are the more intriguing.
