Natasha Lunn

When I asked psychiatrist Dr Megan Poe why people lose their sense of self in relationships, she said it’s sometimes because they’re trying to ‘echo-locate the other and not reveal the self’ and merge with them.

If you don’t like being alone, you don’t like it, and that’s all right. Forcing yourself to do something when every cell in your body is screaming ‘no’ just leads to panic. It’s difficult to know the difference between forcing yourself to do something that’s not good for you, and being scared of doing something that is good for you. If the fear is excitement, then feel it and do it anyway. But if it’s about the massive amount of willpower that’s required to do something out of societal pressure, then that’s different.

This was how I spent the twilight of my twenties: always believing I was just on the edge of meeting someone, seeing opportunities everywhere, then feeling a little pathetic when they never quite materialized in reality. The searching was a constant distraction, as if talking to a friend at a party and looking over their shoulder at who might be coming through the door next. Except, instead of a conversation, I was missing my life.