Most days I sit in my single dorm room and scroll through social media just to realize how lonely I feel in college.
Before I came to college, I thought my days would be packed with hanging out with friends and going to parties, but I was wrong. I will give myself some slack since I did start college in the middle of a pandemic, but I still like to blame myself for my loneliness. Here’s my confession: most weekends I spend the whole time by myself. I’ll go without talking to a single soul except the people I interact with at work.
You might be asking, why are you telling us this very intimate part of your life? The reason is because I want to let others know that they are not alone.
According to a 2017 study, 63.1% of college students report that they have felt very lonely anytime in the past twelve months. My suspicion tells me that percentage has probably increased with COVID-19.
I will admit I never have had a particularly hard time with making friends, though it’s always taken me a long time to develop strong connections. This wasn’t a huge issue for me in high school since we had the same classes the whole year and were stuck in a building with each other eight hours of the day. College isn’t like that though, everyone has completely different schedules and you don’t get the social interaction in-class like you did in high school.
On top of that, it seems that everyone has these huge friend groups or perfect relationships on social media. While I’m happy for them, I can’t help but to compare my situation to theirs.
I personally feel like loneliness in college is a brushed over topic. Anytime I’ve confessed my struggle to someone I get one of two responses. One, they tell me I have so many people in my life who do care about me. Two, which I think is even worse, they tell me I just need to put myself out there. Normally I just roll my eyes because believe me, I have!
I think loneliness is so much deeper than simply being alone. I feel like this quote from Vivek Murthy resonated with me about my definition of loneliness. Murthy said, “Loneliness is different than isolation or solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have.”
So if loneliness is so common in college, why don’t we talk about it? From personal experience, I find it extremely difficult to talk about. I feel like it’s almost this embarrassing little secret I’m hiding from the world. Because if I admit I’m lonely in college it’s like admitting I’m failing at being a college student. On top of that, there is so much stigma still around mental health that it’s already frowned upon to talk about.
For those of you out there who are struggling with loneliness in college, I want to let you know I see you and you are not alone. You are worthy of all the love and friendships in your life, even if you think you aren’t. Sending much love, signed your fellow lonely college student.
