Most people are afraid of the word or the idea of being alone. Why? Society usually interprets aloneness as some sort of pain or social disease. When the average individual hears “alone,” they automatically assume ostracized.
Well, I’m not your average individual.
So while society has their fixed definition of alone and what it means to be alone; what’s my interpretation of the two?
So what does it mean to be alone?
To be alone means you’re comfortable enough with yourself that you choose aloneness.
Not because you have no one.
Not because no one wants you.
But because sometimes, you want you.
There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. A difference people seem to forget because they’ve convinced themselves that solitude must always be accompanied by sadness.
But I don’t think being alone is sad.
I think there’s something beautiful about being able to exist without needing someone else’s presence to validate your own.
To sit in a room with nothing but your thoughts and not feel the desperate need to fill the silence.
To eat alone.
Walk alone.
Think alone.
Cry alone.
Laugh at something stupid that only you find funny.
To have entire conversations in your head and somehow understand yourself better afterward.
That, to me, is aloneness.
It isn’t a punishment.
It’s a choice.
And sometimes, it’s a form of freedom.
Because when you’re alone, there’s no performance. No pretending to be okay when you aren’t. No adjusting yourself to fit comfortably into someone else’s expectations. No wondering if you’re being too loud, too quiet, too emotional, too distant, too much, or not enough.
You simply exist.
And maybe that’s what scares people about being alone.
Not the silence.
Not the empty chair beside them.
Not the lack of conversation.
Maybe what scares them is having nothing left to distract them from themselves.
Because when everyone leaves, you’re left with the one person you can never escape.
You.
And I think I’ve learned to be okay with that.
Actually—more than okay.
I’ve learned to like my own company.
There are days when I want people around me. Days when I want to laugh until my stomach hurts, talk until my voice gets tired, and feel surrounded by people who make the world seem a little less heavy.
But there are also days when I want nothing.
No messages.
No conversations.
No explanations.
Just me.
And I don’t think that makes me antisocial.
I don’t think it makes me lonely.
I think it makes me human.
Because sometimes the world is simply too loud.
And when everything outside of me becomes noise, aloneness becomes the quiet I need to hear myself again.
So maybe being alone isn’t about having nobody.
Maybe it’s about knowing that you can have nobody around you and still have yourself.
And honestly?
I think that’s one of the most comforting things a person can know.
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