Alone, different from Lonely

Do you know that it is possible to feel alone or lonely even when there are thousands of people around you?

At first, it is the weirdest feeling ever because you don’t know what’s happening, well at least I didn’t. You might feel lonely and that hurts. You might feel like nobody likes you, that can be a difficult thing to take in. You might even feel excluded from society for whatever reason and that could lead to some insecurities.

These are tough things to deal with, I would know.

Once upon a time, not very long ago, I learnt that there is a difference between being alone and feeling lonely.

Let’s check the dictionary:

Alone: having no one else present

Lonely: sad because one has no friends or company

Huge difference, right? I think so. Of course in my scepticism I would ask, “what if I am alone for too long, wouldn’t I then become lonely?” Well, I can’t dispute that, anything is very much possible. It might be very dependent on what do you choose to do in your time alone; push everyone away or work on bettering yourself?

I’ve been figuring out that there are times that you do need to be alone, it comes with some sort of magic (nope, I am not saying that magic is a real thing, I don’t know that, I’m just describing a feeling). Think about this: whenever you had a ground breaking idea, were you not perhaps alone? If you are religious/spiritual, don’t you receive your God-given/univerally-granted sign (God is inclusive of all religions that have a God(s)) when you are alone? Because Christianity is the religion that I am familiar with, it happened to Moses/Abraham/Joseph, just to name a few. Just for added emphasis, I make my best decisions when I am alone in the bathroom.

Whenever I chose to be alone, that was when I acknowledged that it was time for me to grow, in whatever terms growth meant to me at that point in time. I meditate just to clear my head. I even speak to myself in order to reason with myself and well sometimes you need a highly intellectual conversation and who else better to give it to you other that yourself. I think it comes with this idea of not being able to lie to yourself and only you know your weakness in order to correct yourself. You can call me crazy, I’m okay with that.

But it is not okay to feel lonely. Empty on the inside. Unloved or cared for. In your time of need nobody is around, they are all just gone, busy, or whatever. This one touches home, because I am still afraid of getting to that point.

I’ve mentioned before that in high school I was cyber bullied and emotionally bullied as well. Rumours and accusations were made of me which were never true. People went as far as to create a WhatsApp group chat to talk trash about me. It is shocking to believe that in 1st year of varsity a group of idiots did the same thing, not necessarily on WhatsApp, that one was a planned congregation. So that of course led to me feeling lonely, truly isolated and unwanted because on top of that I had to deal with the parents being separated around the same time in high school.

It sucks and it will always suck but here I am writing about it and I’m glad to be able to write about it. It means loneliness didn’t end my world yet.

I say, differentiate between when you are alone vs when you are lonely. Don’t accidentally confuse the two. When alone, think of it as a good thing, growth. Change the situation when you are lonely, find those that accept you and you accept them for everything that they are.

Let’s be #Royalty