Coping with emptiness

Serious title, isn’t it? Its not meant to be dramtic though, only truthful. I spend alot of my time alone, now more than before. Alone has more meanings than you’d think on the surface. You can be alone in a room with somebody else. Its one of the hardest things to handle too. (but not The Hardest.) To realize you’re in a room with that person and can’t think of a single thing to say or even, at times, why you’re there at all.
How’d it get to this point? I used to be ok with being alone, and I’d be in a reasonably good mood and be doing my own thing that I enjoyed doing. Alot of times, it was just me and music, sometimes from mp3s, other times a CD or even (yes, gasp) the radio. I’ve gotten alot done alone. I’ve designed whole websites by just being up in the middle of the night and listening to something and just relaxing and coding away. I didn’t constantly need other peoples feedback for every little thing then. My own opinion of what I was doing was the only one that mattered, and I trusted it. Usually cause its the most harsh, I’m very hard on myself, particularly when the mental image I have in my head isn’t coming out on the screen or in life.
Now, I don’t trust myself to do whats in my best interest. I don’t admit to myself problems that exist until they’re too late, if even then. So I turn to the feedback of others, which can be a scary place, particularly with people you hardly know. They’re quick to give negative feedback, because what they see isn’t what they want. Listening to the feedback from them too long, and you become a circus monkey, performing for the prevailing current at the time, and being no happier or better off for it. Just drained. So, obviously, the better move is to turn to friends and maybe, family, if you’re fortunate enough to have them around for you, people whom you probably trust. They have their own self-interests too. Its more like dealing in politics, everybody lobbying for what they want and nobody besides you, really cares about what you want, and whats in your best interest, but since I can’t trust myself, I’m dependent on these people, and constantly trying to get the right feedback from them, more times than not its just lacking completely rather than being intentionally wrong or different. Attention Whore. Is what this last behavior has gotten me branded, and its right. I have very few close friends, probably 1 or maybe 0, and maybe only 2-3 friends besides that that i might be able to talk about anything with, besides the weather. So I quietly need alot out of the close friends, since I don’t provide it for myself. In this, is the problem. I don’t trust myself, and there’s nobody to reinforce that i’m right, or that they even care that i’m around at all. Yes, that last phrase there is a leap, from a logical standpoint, but not from an emotional one, if you’re not there for me, you don’t care about me, and since there’s so few people who seem to really care about me, each time that happens, it hurts badly, and being hurt brings up the next layer of defensive tactics, and surely I must be doing something wrong to get hurt, and the best way to avoid hurt is to be alone…
There’s my paradox. I just feel so empty and alone, and it hurts too much to not be. Repeat.