I have never thought of myself as a lonely person, but it has come to my attention as of lately that I am, in fact, completely, and horrifically alone.

It is verifiable that very few of us live in true isolation, the anomaly being pariahs of our society; the convicts in their steel cages, the demented in their padded cages, and the misfits in their invisible cages. My cage, nonexistent to the untrained eye, is that of the nonconformist.

Physically, we do not live alone. We coexist, cohabit, cooperate. As the human race, we're psychologically conditioned to crave company; polyamory, monogamy or platonically. We suffer alone.

On a physical level, I am not alone; but psychogenically, I am secluded. The irony being that I'm one of few blessed with the gift of mingling mind with others. But believe me, having excavated the minds of so many, I can tell you the plunder is rarely gold. Desecrated and rotting remains is what you're more likely to find in the catacombs of the subconscious.

Much to the misconception of my younger self, loneliness is not defined purely by lack of physical interaction; it is a lack of psychological fulfillment.

My family starves me of physical contact, acknowledged. Long gone are the days where I'd be cherished with hugs until I fell sleep, the days when I would walk for miles with my hand linked with my papa's, the days when I would be lavished with kisses under summer sun.

Raven is the only person who I'm vaguely intimate with, but even her brushes of the hand are fleeting, and on the rare occasion does she come close enough to make contact with me; she still fears frightening me off with her otherworldly appearance.

Cosigned to oblivion are the memories of what it is to feel worth. Day to day, I'm consumed by a swelling sensation of obsolescence. It's an abysmal vacuous feeling that grows as days crawl past. It's a hole in my soul that once was corked with love, validity and courage; but those traits have escaped me like smoke through my fingers. The same way that all sense of direction and meaning in my life has become obscured.

I would compare the feeling of being nugatory with the astral phenomenon of the black hole. A black hole is a ravenous rupture in the fabric of reality that's catalysed by the collapse of matter - being a collapsing volatile mess myself, I can already draw parallels. As it collapses, it decimates everything around it; drawing it into the pool of annihilation. And the more it consumes, the more famished it becomes, and its appetite is insatiable; it never stops gobbling up existence. Nothing eludes a black hole, it's all consuming.

That's what I'm like. A choleric bundle of matter, collapsing, drawing everyone into my never-ending despair. And I see it; I can drain the life from a room with just my stifling presence. I'm the uninvited bad smell that won't waft away. And the way my mother looks at me; it's like she wants me to evaporate and diffuse out of existence.

Perhaps I should do her a favour and do that very thing.

My issue is I'm feeding that black hole; trying to plug it with friends and family, but they just get swallowed whole. I destroy them, with my depressing tendencies. God knows why Raven shows such fidelity.

The black hole is my constant company.

I arise every day with that sinking feeling of invalidity and question where I fit into the world. I feel like the malformed puzzle piece that doesn't quite click in with the rest. I always have been; the psychotic prodigy in private school, the demented and disturbed descendant of the Xaviers and the mental menace to society that the Markos view me as.

All of this loneliness has manifested in the form of monophobia. I find silence petilential, I find extended periods of isolation flustering and I feel incapable of being self-sufficient. Whereas I once fantasized about spreading my wings and soaring around the globe, now I quiver at the notion of stepping beyond my doorstep. It's bordering agoraphobic.

Every single day is a chore: waking up, feeling incapacitated anxiety to move from my bed and too incapable to function in day to day life. It's a self perpetuating cycle. I go to bed every night praying that when I wake up the next day that I won't feel the same. But  I always do. And every morning starts the same way; feeling worthless and hopeless. How to break the cycle, I'm unsure - but its clearly more deeply psychologically rooted.

Do you know: it's been so long since I've felt mental tranquility that I've forgotten what feeling 'normal' is like. I'm constantly jittery, anticipatory of an incoming catastrophe; I don't trust the world to be kind to me. The world has never been kind to me before, why should it be now? There's constantly a small voice at the back of my mind forecasting unspecific impending doom: death, destruction, danger. It's like a siren; and the only time it's silent is when I finally fall alseep.

Sleeping has become an obstacle. In the daytime, my waking mind is occupied with tasks that prevent it wandering down the unbeaten track of dark and depressing thoughts. Come the nighttime, deprived of an aim, my mind is unleashed and allowed to explore the abysmal and petrifying. I don't feel permitted to call it insomnia without a medical diagnosis, but I'm practically sleeplessness. I define a good night by being asleep before three am.

Ridiculous isn't it?

And sleeplessness takes a toll on my activity during the daytime. I feel lethargic. Grotty. My limbs leaden, my eyes weighty, and my mind strained. I must look like the living dead walking around under the sun.

Raven is one of my crutches. Shoving my nose in a book isn't the same as the soothing symphony of another's voice. Raven and I; We're close as two people can be: like brother and sister. She knows that I'm not alright, but what she's aware of is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't wish to be a burden to her; I'm supposed to be her guardian; which means exuding an air of infallibility, dauntlessness and optimism: but right now that's turning out to be easier said than done.

I feel fragile as the Ming vase in the library, but worth none of the value.

My confidence was consumed by the black hole residing inside of me.

These feelings can make you feel out of touch with the world. It's plain to see I'm unlike any other. Whereas others go on with their day-to-day life, I feel static in my confounding. I've begun to feel disinterest, disheartened and dispassionate about the things I used to revel in, and consequently, I've lost my connection with everything. With life. This feeling is indomitable. Could I take a cure for this drowning feeling, I would. But even then I would do it dispassionately.

I can't definitively place my finger on what the source of this feeling is that's corroding me from the inside out. Perhaps it's nothing. Perhaps its everything.

I covet someone to depend upon, but I have an aversion to admitting to how I really feel. The moment I verbalize my thoughts and feelings is the moment that they become real, and there's no undoing that admission. And once they're real, I have to combat them; but I don't have the stamina or resilience for trifling with such strong emotions.

What's more, I'm reputable of being cocky, flirty and having a good sense of humour - I don't want to debase that public persona. And if I share these feelings with other people, I make myself vulnerable. I can't find anyone unwaveringly loyal enough to place all of my faith in and share this with; besides the impartial pages of my unprejudiced diary.

This is where Raven comes in.

She's distant enough from the family not to be biased on the entanglement of issues concealed beneath the surface of a bottomless fortune to the Xavier name and a mansion more akin to a palace. She's candid, compassionate, chivalrous. And I every time I see her I feel on the cusp of spilling my aching heart out to her, only reigning in my emotions for fear of driving her away with the horrors haunting my head. She has no idea what a paradigm of hope she is to me. I pin hopes to her and she has no idea.

Tragic, isn't it?

She's a light in my life, but then again, black holes are capable of gobbling up light and matter.

This loneliness is not a finite thing. It's boundless, unruly and intangible. You cannot place a finger on its beginning or end, and you cannot execute it as you would something so taxing in reality. It's a figment of your psyche that you cannot switch off, and it's bothering me like a buzzing light fitting.

This loneliness, it extends to crippling my self image. Before now, I'd never picture myself as the reticent and shy type; and I'm struggling to redefine myself as these feelings change me into something beyond my recognition. Some days, I peer in the mirror and the reflection looks so unlike my own I'm taken aback: bulging bags of insomnia drooping beneath my eyes, the waxen complexion as if all of the spirit and health has been washed from my skin and my soul, and my broken smile. I looked how my dad should've looked in his coffin.

Smiling has become infrequent enough that when I do smile, I startle; the expression straining the unused muscles in my face. Seldom do I laugh, that's a rarity even less common than my smile. And my laugh is hoarse, and as hollow as I feel. What is there to laugh about?

I can try and brave-face every day and choke down the barrage of emotions, charging head on at each day like a herd of rams, but eventually the facade fails. Eventually, the charging, animalistic emotions catch up to me and trip me up when I least expect it.

Is this what 'rock bottom' is?

Is this what Winston Churchill referred to as his black dog?

Is this what depression is?

It's funny: when you're a kid, they tell you that the teenage years 'are the best of your life!' And tell you of thriving independence, carving out your identity, and maturing. What they don't tell you about is the identity crisis that is the precursor to the metamorphosis into an adult. The foreboding notion you're getting older and you have a responsibility to achieve something. The dawning realisation that no one is going to look after you and you're going to have to pilot your life.

Being a teenager is terrifying. And horribly lonely.

I just want some guidance. A co-pilot, if you will. A hand to hold. Someone to understand me without opinion; and not a lousy psychiatrist who sits there like a nodding dog pretending as if they fully empathise with, and understand what you're feeling; as if they're going through the trauma, not you.

I'm in a rut, in short. And I just need a helping hand to offer to pull me out.

This house makes me sick. It feels like a prison. It's a drain on me. The ghost of my father's existence lurks in every corridor, room and possession. Right now, the only thing to spur me on and keep me sane is the knowledge that one day I'll leave this place behind. Leave behind the memories turned sour, my alcoholic mother, and her filthy fat pig of a boyfriend.

I'd love to go far from here. Return to my roots. England. The Home Counties. Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire!

Education is my passport to the future; I just know it. It'll take me away from this dead end family, with their stupid lineage, and outrageous heritage. I want to be more than my ancestors. I want to do more with my life.

My only solace is the academia I inherited, thank you dad.