Alone is not lonely

So here is my latest rant I have been working on for a while. Alone and lonely are not the same. That’s it. That’s all.

Loneliness is the experience of not being met. It’s reaching outward and finding no recognition. You can feel it in a relationship. In a crowded room. In the middle of a conversation where you are technically present but internally untouched. Aloneness is different. Aloneness is not the absence of people. It is the absence of intrusion. It is time in which you are not being interpreted, responded to, or shaped by someone else’s needs. It is space where your inner rhythm is not disturbed by external demands.

Well, how it starts is with most of us being reachable at all times. Our phones are rarely off. Messages are answered within seconds. We clarify. We reassure. We explain delays. Over time, this constant accessibility doesn’t feel like pressure, it grows on us and it kinda feels normal that everyone wants a piece of us at any time of the day or night. But when you think about it, being always potentially interruptible, your nervous system stays constantly alert. A part of you is always anticipating input. Even when nothing is happening, you are half waiting. You start organizing your time around potential interruptions. Your attention fragments. And slowly, being alone, which is our natural state starts to feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable, our orientation shift from inward to an agonizing outward.

But you I spend enough time alone, think of what’s happening. Thoughts stop arranging themselves for dialogue. No rehearsing explanations. No adjusting tone. Without that constant micro-adjustment, identity and real preferences surface. Preferences that don’t need to be socially acceptable, or explained. Think of how emotions process differently and can just unfold in solitude. Questions become clearer because they are not immediately exposed to other people’s interpretations. There is space to sit with uncertainty without needing to resolve anything.

So you know, without solitude, without the ability and right to be alone, maybe identity becomes just reactive, something assembled from feedback.

What I keep finding out is that not everyone is comfortable with someone who values time alone. Some interpret it as withdrawal, or as rejection, or as distance. If someone depends on constant access to feel secure, your boundary will feel like a threat to them. But needing space is not cruelty. Read this a couple of times if you need to. It is how we prevent resentment and how we remain coherent. You are not required to justify every hour you spend offline. You are not obligated to make yourself continuously available to prove loyalty or affection. Intimacy does not require constant access. In fact, intimacy without space often collapses into surveillance. If a friendship or any relationship and form of interaction can only function when you are always reachable, something in it is unstable. And instability shouldn’t be stabilized by self-abandonment.

For artists, but then again everyone is a potential artist anyway, there is also a practical reason aloneness matters: creation requires it. Every meaningful idea needs uninterrupted stretches of thought. Not five minutes between notifications. Not while answering messages. Not while absorbing other people’s opinions. When we are constantly exposed to other people’s voices, our own becomes diluted. We start filtering and editing before something has even fully formed. Creativity shrinks under constant observation and noise and stress of others. Silence is not emptiness. It allows something specific and unpolished to exist long enough to take shape. Without that space, we default to imitation, reaction, or safe output. Originality does not come from exposure. It comes from digestion. And digestion requires solitude.

Choosing to be alone can feel selfish, especially if you are used to being the accommodating one. The always emotionally available one. There is this weird unspoken social expectation that being good means being accessible. So sometimes, when you choose to disconnect, even temporarily, guilt surfaces. At least this is often the case for me. This guilt often comes from disrupting expectations, not from doing something harmful. But I try to remember, and you try to remember to: Protecting your attention is not selfish! Protecting your clarity is not rejection! You have the right to undisrupted you!

We need connection. We need exchange. We need to be seen. I get it. Of course. But I’ve been thinking maybe the real risk isn’t loneliness. Maybe the real risk is never being alone long enough to breathe and to recognize yourself without influence. And that feels far more lonely than silence ever would.