Participant ID: P10
Pseudonym: Daniel
Age: 19
Gender: Man
Occupation: Second-year undergraduate (English literature)
Living situation: Shares a dorm room at UBC
Relevant context: Gay; not out to family; raised in a conservative evangelical household in Abbotsford
Interview date: 2025-11-19
Interview length: 31 minutes
Interviewer: R2
Location: Online (his choice)

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I: Thanks for joining, Daniel. Tell me about yourself.

P: Yeah. I'm 19. I'm an English major at UBC, second year. I'm from Abbotsford. I'm — I'm gay, but my parents don't know that, and that's relevant. So I live in residence which is — it's fine. My roommate is okay. We don't really talk.

I: When you hear the word loneliness, what comes to mind?

P: Being a different person in different rooms. That's loneliness for me. Like, the version of me that calls my mom on Sundays and the version of me that goes to the queer student association on Thursday nights are different people. Nobody knows both of them. So I'm always — partly hidden. From everyone. And that's loneliness, even though I'm with people.

I: How does it feel physically?

P: It feels like — I don't sleep great. I get headaches. There's this tightness in my chest that I had to look up because I thought I had asthma and the doctor was like, no, that's just anxiety. So.

I: Is it different from being alone?

P: I think so? I like being alone with my books. That's restorative. The loneliness is when I'm pretending to be someone I'm not. So it's not the absence of people, it's the presence of people who don't get the actual me.

I: Tell me about a recent time you felt lonely.

P: Family dinner last weekend. I went home. My dad was talking about, like, his opinions about — gay people, basically. And I just sat there and ate my dinner and said nothing. And the loneliness in that moment — being at the table with the people who are supposed to love me, and not being able to say I'm one of the people he was talking about — that's the worst loneliness I know.

I: Have you found things that help?

P: The queer student association at UBC. That's where I'm a whole person. I have two friends from there, James and Aiden, who know everything. They are — I would not be here if I didn't have them.

I: What didn't work?

P: I tried writing a letter to my parents and not sending it. People say that helps. It didn't really help. I felt worse after. Like I'd rehearsed something I'm too scared to do.

I: Have you sought professional help?

P: The university counselling centre. There's a queer-specific counsellor I see every two weeks. She is — she has been very important. She doesn't try to push me to come out before I'm ready, which I appreciate.

I: What is your loneliness telling you?

P: That I can't keep this up forever. That hiding has a cost and I'm paying it. And that I'm scared because telling them means I might lose them and I don't know how to live with that risk.

I: Do you think of yourself as a lonely person?

P: Yes. Yes, I do. I think I have been lonely since I was about thirteen. I think I will not be lonely in the same way once I'm out. I have to believe that.

I: Anything that helped that surprised you?

P: Reading. I know that sounds cliché for an English major. But reading queer writers — Baldwin, Maggie Nelson, Garth Greenwell — has made me feel less alone in a way nothing else has. Books are friends across time, weirdly.

I: If you could change one thing?

P: I would want every queer kid in a conservative household to know there are adults out there who would catch them. Like, a real bridge between the kid and the rest of the world. Most of us figure it out alone. I don't know if that should have to be the case.

I: Anything I haven't asked about?

P: Just — I want to say it gets better but I don't know yet if that's true. I'm 19. I haven't gotten there. I'm hoping. But the hope is also its own kind of loneliness, the hoping for a future you can't see.
