During the first 30 or so years of my life I actively strained to have a happy family, wide social circle and all the associated social trappings. The amount of money, energy and time I plowed into this was incredible, and, in retrospect, I was often taken advantage of due to my almost desperate need to belong. From the outside I was a picture of social success, especially given that I had recently moved countries and started from scratch in the middle of nowhere.

But you see, it is easy to completely lose ones own identity if one values themselves from the mirror of the expectations of others, or, even worse, their expectations regarding others' expectations of themselves. At some especially dark night of my soul I was forced to admit that I had no idea who _I_ was. Everything I did was, essentially, facade building, and behind that facade there was emptiness, and a fair bit of chaos as well.

So sometime around 35 I gave up. I cut out my toxic parents from my life, stopped pursuing romantic relationships ot of fear of being alone, stopped collecting 'cool' acquaintances in real life and on Facebook and focused instead on two things:
- building quality relationships with those few humans whom I loved, respected and who truly reciprocated in kind,
- discovering myself and building a stable foundation to become fully me.

I also got a dog, not because I am a dog person, but because I figured out that I have been looking for unconditional approval no human can actually give, but dogs, from what I read, can, and do all the time. This proved to be the right decision and has helped me a lot to become my own person.

It was, and still is, an adventure. I have discovered many new things I enjoy and discarded equally many I only partook because it was a way to please, finally stabilised my finances and career, acquired tons of knowledge, read hundreds of sci-fi and fantasy books, developed my own style, decorated my home entirely to my taste and, perhaps most surprisingly for anyone who knows me, taken up triathlon which I enjoy so much. It is both expensive and time-consuming, but, at last, all that time, money and energy goes to myself, forming a positive feedback loop.

My social interactions are a lot fewer and my circle of acquaintances a lot smaller these days, but each and every one of them is cherished. My life is busy enough now that both additional social interactions and romantic pursuits perforce are subjected to a sort of cost-benefit analysis - will this activity help me grow as a person more than the one I will be skipping out on instead?

My main insight from this process is that it seems that we in general expect someone else to provide for us the feeling of safety, companionship and happiness that we are fully capable of giving to ourselves. It is so much easier to blame others for our own misery - it requires no effort and gives a temporary relief from pain, transforming it into anger. Empowerment starts when, instead of hoisting it off to others we can not control, but can endlessly blame, we fully take responsibility for making ourselves happy, content and safe. The 'unconditional positive regard' [1] is something we can give ourselves if only we allow ourselves to do so, and in so doing, heal and become whole in a way that nobody else can do for us.

Similarly to @pmoriarty, holidays which are traditional to be spent with ones family can still be tough for me sometimes. But just this last Christmas (which I spent entirely by myself) I came to conclusion that my main source of sadness is not the fact that I am alone. I do not like large gatherings of people, I do not enjoy most of the traditions around the holiday and I am bored by inane conversations which are part and parcel of gatherings of people who have not seen each other for a while and do not even know each other all that well anymore.

No, the sadness is due to the feeling that I am missing out on something that everyone else has, which society has conditioned me to believe is the only way to be happy at this particular date and time, with the associated feelings of unfairness, jealousy and self-pity. Once I got past that, I realised that I have the freedom to choose what _I_ want to do with the evening that will make _me_ happy, most likely a lot happier than any alternatives any other humans could provide. So I took home delicious food and spent the night being cosy and reflecting on the past year and making plans for the next one.

So to conclude, “there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives” [2]. It takes courage and a fair bit of work to find yours, but it is worth it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_positive_regard
[2] https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/11/01/figuring/