Just like anybody else, I get lonely from time to time. It doesn't come in days or weeks of self-pity or anything that one might classify as an "emo kid" kind of reaction; it's more like a few minutes in some day every now and again where I realized I haven't talked to anybody for awhile and I start to feel a little isolated.
And immediately, when I feel lonely, two things happen: I get more self-absorbed, and I want everyone else to pay attention to me. Sometimes I'll tweet something (these are usually my worst tweets, neither funny nor insightful nor particularly interesting in any way), other times I'll go through my facebook news feed and make comments on things from people I haven't talked to in weeks/months/years. This is me at my worst, I think. Not because it's malicious or mean or anything like that, it's just pretty selfish.
This isn't something that happens to me a whole lot; if I post a comment on your facebook and we haven't talked in awhile, it's far more likely I just had something I wanted to tell [i]you[/i] in particular or I hadn't heard from you in awhile and wanted to see what was up. Or maybe you posted a status that made me think of some response, and I thought my response was clever enough to share with the world (this is by far the most likely scenario, even if my response wasn't actually all that clever).
I think in the future, when I get that isolated feeling, I'll probably just call some people and ask them questions about their life. The tendency towards self-absorption is tempting but I prefer to avoid it. If quality introspection is what helps me stay stable and content, then neurotic self-obsession is what will drive me to a far less comfortable existence. Asking other people about their lives helps me "widen my lens," so to speak, and see that there's more out there than my peaceful little existence.
