I was once friendless and alone.  Now I have close, loving relationships and am not alone. It took intentional effort and a lot of time. I would like to share what I have learned in case it helps others escape loneliness. I call this project Presence and Motion. 

Who is this this for: Anyone who is lonely and no longer wants to be. This is especially aimed at those who are alone and lonely, but it may apply to those who feel a kind of loneliness despite relationships they already have. This isn’t to say that everything that helped me will help you. I suspect that at least some of what I learned will apply to a lonely reader. 

As a result of my limited personal perspective it is likely this guide will apply most to people who are similar to me. If you are neurodivergent, particularly with ADHD or autism, you may find this guide especially relevant. I would expect this guide to be most applicable to people in early adulthood, from late teens to their thirties. I can’t speak directly to what escaping loneliness is like for those forty years old or more, though it is possible enough will generalize that it may still be useful to older readers. 

In a sense I am speaking mostly to my lonely past self, the one who woke up one day to realize they were alone, lonely, and desperately in need of human connection. For this reason it may be especially useful for those who struggle with the fundamentals of social grace. I am going to do my best to explain things assuming the reader knows basically nothing. For the purposes of this project I will assume you have no friends and do not know where to even begin to find them. 

My context: I am in my late 30s. I am happily married and enjoy a modest-but-vibrant social life. According to the practitioners of psychology who have observed me I have some combination of ADHD and ASD. I have been, at various times, suicidally depressed and so anxious I could not leave the house. I have been friendless multiple times in my teens, twenties, and early thirties. I try to be a good person, but I am not always nice. 

I am not a natural with people, nor am I any kind of ‘social butterfly’. Whatever social grace I have was not acquired effortlessly by social osmosis. Instead, I recognized in my late teens that I was basically without a clue. I had no friends at age nineteen and realized I had no idea how to make friends. I had never been on a date, never been kissed. I was alone. More than that, I had plenty of evidence that I was so difficult to be around that people actively avoided me. My efforts to connect almost exclusively resulted in others getting annoyed, offended, or some other combination of negative responses that consistently left me alone and confused. 

I resolved to learn to be better. This resolution happened on top of a mesa in Colorado just as the sun was dipping below the front range. The air smelled of brewing beer. I felt broken and humiliated. The sharpest tools in my inventory were my mind, will, and volition, and so those are what I used to try to move forward. I made a lot of mistakes. I would learn, practice, and improve. Eventually I was able to make casual acquaintances, then friends, then close friends. I had a few serious romantic relationships, the last of which resulted in a mutual love and trust deep enough to recognize with marriage. 

Caveats: I guarantee nothing. I can promise only that I will make a sincere effort to be as truthful and comprehensive as possible.