Welcome to episode four of my podcast. I can't believe this is the fourth episode of me using my voice for self-expression and having these solo podcasts. In this podcast, I want to talk a bit about gay loneliness, and the gay loneliness that I feel.

A theme that has evolved this weekend is what it's like to navigate and live life totally alone. For many years, to be fair—what it is like to grow up in a conservative country without a best friend who can understand you, to grow up with conditional love, being accepted only if I'm straight, growing up with the emotional distance from my dad, growing up with a lot of envy and jealousy from my sister, growing up in a place where I could never feel safe to open up to anyone, where I could never have someone who would listen to me. Growing up without friends has been the hardest thing of my life. And for some reason, recently I felt the same gay loneliness that I've always felt.

And again, I'm asking myself: what is the point of living without those cherished connections? Don't get me wrong—I do have close friends, I have a good therapist, my relationship with my sister has improved, and I talk to my parents very often. But I just felt so alone, so unseen in this pain. I want to talk about how this just affects you. It affects how you enjoy your life, and it affects the activities that you would otherwise enjoy.

I feel like I might die without being known emotionally. I'm so grateful to have Marcus, who knows me—a friend I can tell, "You know what? I was depressed yesterday, Marcus." And he looks at me with kindness and softness, and that's all it is. And yet, I just feel alone.

You don't choose whether you feel alone or not; you just do. Losing Leo has been a big part of it, though I also made the two best friends ever—if I hadn't lost Leo, I don't think this friendship with Marcus would have evolved. Still, I feel like no matter what I achieve—even if I have the best voice, if I become the best actor, if I have a hit album, if I live in a big house, or if I get in the best shape of my life—I just feel alone.

In fact, there is a deeper thing that I feel: I wanted what Julian had alluded to giving me. And of course, there is a lot of grief that I feel from losing Julian.

I loved Julian. I only knew him for a couple of months, so is that an overstatement? Well, yeah, I don't know how you define it, but let's be more fair and say I got attached to him really hard. There is another episode for this, but I definitely toned down my needs—toned down my life. I erased my needs so that I could go and see him. I would pretend that I was going to London anyway just to go and be with him in London. When we had our first date, I thought in my mind, "Oh, that's my guy." A lot of it was those expectations I put on the guy before he even had a chance to figure out what he wanted. I was like, "Oh, this is my guy," and I couldn't accept anything else—even when he said he wanted to slow down. At some point, I just wasn't seeing that we didn't meet eye to eye on how we liked each other, because I wanted him to like me so badly that I was blind.

I've been very sad not to have had him. I'm sad that we're not texting. I'm sad that I don't get those messages like, "How was your day? What are you up to? What are you doing?" I'm grieving this again—I'm grieving Julian, Leo, Kai, not having a relationship with my dad, all of my exes, and the people I dated when I was younger. I'm just grieving this entire cycle of my life when nothing works. Now, that's not to say I'm not blessed, but this weekend has been painful, and I've had to accept that there is pain.

To conclude this podcast, I want to say that my mantra now—my philosophy in life—is to really tone down my expectations for everything: for how I will look, for my business, for how money will work, whether boys or men will like me or not, whether this is going to work out or not, whether I'm going to have dinner or not, whether I'm going to make more money, whether my long-term plans in the country work out, whether I'm going to wake up tomorrow, or whether my parcels arrive. I've ordered a new laptop recently, and if it arrives, sure—but if it doesn't make it, then it's not meant to be.

I know this might sound unhealthy or whatever, but I have no expectations. My energy and goals are going to be put into systems—systems that operate without looking at the outcome. Those systems look at the outcome only as feedback to improve the system, with no expectations attached. Say I'm starting a business, releasing a new song, or releasing a new book, and I work a thousand days on this book. I have worked a thousand days: the book could go into the bin and no one could read it, or it could be read by two people, or 50 people, or whatever. This is my mantra: I work on my system. Because what happened with Julian was a total disappointment for my system.

Thank you for coming to my podcast.