This is very close to how I feel. I've never had a "ride or die" type of friend who is on my same level. No matter how good of a friend I seem to make, I always end up being the one who needs to initiate in order to communicate. I have never been able to find someone who will reach out to ME first and suggest hanging out, and that's what I REALLY really want. Being the constant initiator gets exhausting. It's been this way since college. For a long time I had been sort of hiding behind constant long-term relationships, even living with a partner for ~5 years, as a partner is sort of expected to do half the work... I broke up with my most recent long-term girlfriend a couple months back and have been really happy single, it's something I've needed in my life for a long time, to take a break from dating/relationships (over the last 15 years of my life I think I was single for a cumulative total of maybe a year or a year and a half?)... but I am sorely missing that feeling of someone acknowledging that I exist. I don't want or need it to come from a romantic partner, I just want people to treat me the way I treat them. Send me a text every once in a while to ask how my week was, see if I want to grab coffee Saturday morning, or join them at some event after work... I can usually keep up my effort and be social, but sometimes I just get tired, and when I stop reaching out to people and being the initiator, I get 0 text messages, 0 phone calls, 0 initiation no matter how long I wait.

That's my loneliness, that feeling that I could drop dead and the only people that would care or notice are my brother and parents.