I hope it's not annoying to people if I type this word yet again, but: meditation. If I had known how helpful it would be, I would have started many years ago.

It just doesn't seem possible that it's helpful, right? Sitting quietly and watching the breath? But as you do it and get better at it, you learn what it's about, and realize how it's helping in ways that might seem subtle at first.

I felt like an outsider my whole life, like an alien imposter, never getting the memos that other people seemed to get, and I know it caused me a lot of suffering, but after my almost two years of daily meditation, when I call up the subject of loneliness in my mind, I just can't get it to hurt anymore. I just can't get it to make sense anymore. It feels like the mental supports for my discontent have been eroded away. Now I feel as if it was kind of crazy that it ever hurt. I've never really been alone, and never will be. It's not really possible to be alone.