The thing about loneliness

While I am alone in a dark room, sitting in front of the laptop screen, this post is actually inspired by a post about loneliness by Roger Ebert and the comments that followed.
As I continued reading the various comments posted by some 400 odd people, I had this profound realization that human beings are part of a lonely race. Lonely because, we're surrounded by people in almost everything we do, but our consciousness still allows us to be alone, with the profound need to belong. I'm not saying everyone is lonely, but almost everyone does face loneliness at one point or another. You feel lonely when no one's your friend, when you think your friends are really not your friends, when you feel disconnected from family, heck you feel lonely simply because you think no one understands you, or understands what it is to be you.
When life is not working out for you, or not working out the way you planned it, when you get bullied and it becomes worse because you think no one's standing up for you, when all you need is the simplest human gesture, a joke to share, a smile, a hug.
And the thing about loneliness is that you know you are lonely, and it grows on you. You try to combat it in every way you can. You try to talk to a lot of people, hoping that somewhere, someone starts liking you. You spend half your life online, hoping you can start a conversation with someone, anyone. And then you start getting desperate, resort to anything and everything just to get out of the emptiness that you think life has become. And when all else fails, you become angry. The tears turn to rage, and you curse, and then just shut yourself from the world. 'Cause of they don't need you, then you don't need them. (Oh and if any of you unwilling readers think this post is a summary of my life, surprisingly I'm in a pretty happy place right now. Of course I'd be happier if I get a 6.0 GPA this sem, but one can't have everything) From the looks of it we're in very strange and almost ironical times. We're all connected to each other in a variety of ways. You know, facebook, email, smart phones, BBM (pointless), twitter (even more pointless), and yet you can feel alone, isolated.
The thing about loneliness is that at some point of time it becomes a hyperbole, an exaggeration. It grows on you, and then it consumes you. What you never realise is that more so than anything else, it's simply a state of mind. And I feel sorry for people who are lonely. Not because they have no one, but because they've been so enveloped by loneliness, that they can't find the strength needed to fight it. And this is through personal experience, but what loneliness does to you is that it defeats you confidence, your once buoyant spirits, leaving you with a pale shadow of your former self. It ends up being a vicious circle, a parasite that feeds on you.
And the last thing about loneliness is that you're the only one who can put an end to it. No counselor in the world can help you. At least people in depression can resort to medicine. But loneliness is a disease you have to treat yourself. Needs just a little bit of strength, a little bit of confidence, the strength to face failure one time in the morning, the confidence you can succeed two times before bed.
So if you were willing to waste five minutes of your life to read this, feel lonely, dismiss this as a piece of crap (which for the record I'm not saying it isn't) and feel like going back to your life with no one in it, simply because you feel no cares or no one is worth it, I'm quoting a line from a film (doesn't make it any less true).
' If you think about it, your favorite memories, the most important moments in your life... were you alone?
Life's better with company.'