The applause is nice, isn’t it?
When they call you strong. When they marvel at your resilience. When they admire the way you carry what would break most people.
You nod. You smile. You let them believe you.
And then you go home, close the door, and collapse under the weight of it.
This is the secret life of the lone wolf:
Everyone sees your power.
No one sees your hunger.
You’ve been starving for connection for years. But connection is dangerous. It’s unpredictable. It has teeth. You know because you have gotten ripped open by those teeth. So you call yourself independent. You wear it like a badge of honor. You tell yourself solitude is a choice, and you made that decision.
But here’s the truth: solitude can heal. Isolation destroys. And what you’ve been calling strength is actually fear wrapped in steel.
The lone wolf isn’t strong. The lone wolf is scared.
The walls you built worked once. They kept you from being blindsided. They gave you a sense of control. They made you untouchable.
But there comes a point when the thing that once protected you starts to choke you.
What used to feel like safety starts to feel like solitary confinement.
You can be surrounded by people and still feel invisible.
You can be admired and still feel like nobody really knows you.
You can be the one everyone calls strong and still go to bed wondering if anyone has ever actually seen you.
That’s the truth no one says out loud about the lone wolf: it looks strong from the outside, but it’s suffocating on the inside.
I’ve walked into crowded rooms, smiling and hugging my face off, while inside I felt like a ghost. I’ve come home to silence so loud it was deafening. I’ve built entire worlds around being capable, dependable, unbreakable …bulletproof— only to realize that being untouchable also meant being untouched.
And let me tell you: isolation doesn’t just leave you lonely. It leaves you at risk. For me, almost 13 years sober, I know the cost: the opposite of addiction isn’t willpower — it’s connection. And when I disconnect, I slide onto dangerous ground. Not alcohol anymore. Not food. Not work. The drug now is isolation itself.
A few years ago, I let someone cross a line in closeness that hadn’t been passed thru before.
I knew it wasn’t healthy. I knew it was dysfunctional. I could feel it in every text, every call…But dysfunction was familiar, and familiar felt safer than trust.
It ended badly. I was done dirty. Like turn my shit into a Dateline episode, dirty…
And my part? I let it last longer than it should have, because familiar is easier than vulnerability.
Although I wouldn’t wish the feelings that came from that on anyone, I also wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. Because even though it blew apart, it was the first time I cracked the door. And once a door has been opened, even a little, you can’t un-know what it feels like to let light in.
When it blew up, I prayed one thing: Please don’t let my heart shut down.
And that prayer cracked something open. It made space for the people who had been there all along — the ones I hadn’t fully let in past the foyer… My real soul fam.
Letting them in hasn’t been easy. Vulnerability is still hard. Receiving is harder. I’d rather be the rock than the one who leans. But every time I drop the act, every time I let someone see the raw and unpolished parts, it feels like air rushing into my lungs after years of holding my breath.
Here’s the thing: you don’t trip and fall into belonging. You don’t stumble into soul fam. You choose it. And that choice will cost you.
It will cost you the badge you’ve been polishing.
It will cost you the armor you’ve been clinging to.
It will cost you the illusion that you’re safer alone.
But it will give you back your life.
What carrying it all alone really is:
not strength, not safety, not independence.
It’s suffocation.
And the only way out is to let yourself be seen. Reallllllllly seen.
So you lay it down.
Not with fanfare, not with applause… but with the quiet relief of someone finally done carrying the weight alone.
You remember what it felt like to be admired and unseen, applauded and untouched, surrounded and still starving. You know that chapter by heart.
And now, you choose to close it.
The room is still quiet. The weight is still heavy. But for the first time, you’re not bracing for impact. You’re breathing. You’re here. And you know…you won’t have to do it all alone anymore.
If this hit you in the gut, go listen to my latest episode of The Enneagram Edge. I get choked up in it, because this isn’t theory for me … it’s lived. And I know, more than most, the cost of being the strong one when what you really needed was a place to fall.
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