I’ve been meaning to write about loneliness for a long time, but I don’t usually like tackling topics that scootch too close to pop psychology. My intention with these essays is not to provide solutions or definitive answers but to prompt meaningful conversations – the sort that helps us feel connected on a human level.
My decision to finally write about loneliness came from a brief DM exchange with a friend who also happens to be a therapist. I told them how I felt about venturing into the seat of an armchair psychiatrist and how unqualified I felt to even try. In return, I got asked a question:
Why do I feel like I need to be an expert to write about something I’ve experienced?
I had two reasons:
- I might be taken too seriously. That’s not good because I’m not a licensed mental health professional, and I don’t want people taking my ‘experiences’ as advice without context.
- I might not be taken seriously at all. Like I imagined actual smart people like mental health professionals reading my work and being like, ‘Who is this idiot’ and sending screenshots to each other and making fun of me on WhatsApp groups. That made me deeply uncomfortable.
So, all this to say – there is a seriousness sweet spot that I’m aiming at here, and I’m hoping I nail it; otherwise, I’ll spontaneously combust, and that won’t be good for the environment.
Today I’m discussing loneliness and being alone and how that can look and feel depending on the season you’re in, your headspace, and most importantly, your relationship with yourself. The experience that I’m drawing from is of moving to a new place as an adult.
To help you get the mostest out of this essay, here are a few definitions – you must memorize them right now.
Alone
If we were in 2003, this wouldn’t have needed so much clarification, but today, it does. You can be by yourself, but if you’re DM-ing someone on your phone, are you alone? If you’re by yourself but if you’re listening to a podcast, are you alone? Maybe yes, maybe no. These days, I define being alone like this: Being by yourself AND being able to hear your thoughts. Basically, being alone in a low-stimulus environment.
Solitude
Being alone + being content with it.
Or being alone and not feeling lonely. Solitude implies choice and presence. It’s less about the absence of company and more about the presence of one’s self. Solitude is like a well-charged battery that holds potential energy – you can use it to create, discover, and contemplate, free from distractions.
Aristotle said that contemplative acts should, in fact, be solitary and free from outside influences. These contemplative acts can be creation, art, music, literature, ideation, dance – all that good stuff.
Isolation
Being alone + sad.
Isolation, unlike solitude, isn’t usually a choice. It has less to do with our company and more to do with our internal state of affairs. Isolation can turn into solitude with time and circumstances, and vice versa. You can eventually go from being alone and sad about it (isolated) to being alone and content with it (solitude).
Now comes the big shark –
Loneliness
While Aristotle commented on the potential of solitude, loneliness is kinda different.
To quote a more current philosopher of our times, Akon, in his song ‘Lonely,’ defines a version of this reality in his memorable opening line: ‘Woke up in the middle of the night and I noticed my girl wasn’t by my side.’
But if loneliness is a part of isolation, then it must also be a product of our internal world. Loneliness isn’t dependent on our surroundings, environment, or the people in our lives. It’s largely unrelated to what’s going on outside us. Meaning Akon could have possibly been lonely even with his girl by his side, and yet, one can’t help but feel like she could have left a note or something.
Living the dream but not the fantasy
This section is about isolation.
I moved to Goa three-ish (WOW) years ago from Bombay. My husband and I both work tech-based remote jobs. We run a cute little cafe and an Airbnb. We live in a nice apartment within walking distance from the beach. I’m sure that if I had to constantly describe our life that way, there’s a lot to be envied.
I like deflating the romanticized version of my life that lives in everyone’s mind. I try my best to be open about the realities of moving from a big city to a small town, the challenges of finding like-minded friends, and the constant tug of war in your mind’s definition of home. But the most profound aspect of this move for me has been confronting a very real loneliness. The kind that has nothing to do with the health of your marriage.
In my first year of life here, I’d walk past busy restaurants and bars, looking at scenes that were eerily familiar yet painfully out of reach – friends engrossed in loud, animated conversations, 90s pop songs playing in the background. I’d overhear plans to go swimming the next day, and I’d watch people piling into a car as they argued about where to go next.
These sounds grew fainter as I walked past, and I was left ouch-ily aware of the fact that my husband and I would probably be having a quiet dinner at home. While I adore his company, these evenings didn’t look anything like the life we were both used to in the city. More importantly, they didn’t look like the life I wanted others to think I was having.
If loneliness truly is a product of our internal environment, I soon discovered that its roots weren’t in my lack of social connections or party plans. My loneliness was a by-product of constantly juxtaposing my life with others and craving their momentary experiences, most of which were, ironically, not beyond my reach.
I wanted to be living the fantasy of ‘girl moves to Goa and has the dream life.’ And because it didn’t look like the highlight reel that one typically has in their mind, I felt lonely. I felt lonely when I looked at the groups of people doing the stuff that others probably thought I was doing all the time.
It made me wonder if I was squandering away this charmed season of my life (that I would NEVER get back) by going home and having quiet evenings doing chores, cooking dinner, and watching Netflix. Or spending most of my time just working. Everyone around me seemed like they were always seizing the day, and I was just a spectator. That felt lonely.
The good news is that this brand of loneliness, which is surface-level and a tad pointless, can be fixed. It’s a combination of FOMO, YOLO, and immaturity. It’s just the result of looking in the wrong direction. While you’re catching a glimpse at everyone else’s life, the choices you make can feel a little isolating.
The antidote? Simply shift your gaze to the life that’s in front of you, and you’ll soon realize that parts of it aren’t all that bad.
Sweet and sour
This section is about solitude.
As per our earlier definition, solitude is being alone and being content with it. Unlike Sonia circa 2020, I now treasure every moment of solitude I have. They don’t come by easily or often as a new mother, and they’re perhaps the one thing I miss most about my life before having a baby.
But the one thing I’ve realized about solitude is that I’m inherently bad at it. Like super crappy at it. I long for free time, but when it finally comes, I fill it up all over again. And on the rare occasion that I don’t busy-up my solitude, I spend that time reaching for my phone and scrolling, watching the same familiar TV show that I’ve watched five times, or spiraling in the same comparison cycle.
This is why I think solitude is a skill we ought to practice. We miss the rare opportunity to find who we are or how we are doing when we don’t allow a single organic thought to enter our minds. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with filling up our quiet time to doom scroll or rewatch The Office, I find that for myself using free time for meaningless activities leaves me feeling empty instead of recharged when my time of solitude is up.
After much thought, I’ve realized that for alone time to really work its magic for me, there are certain conditions that need to be met. My version of safe solitude has a protocol. Here it is:
- Alone-time has to be by choice. It’s like picking a book to read; it’s much more enjoyable when it’s not an assignment.
- I have to be in an emotionally-healthy place. Otherwise, I may spiral into loneliness and/or boredom pretty quick.
- The option of hanging out with people has to be close enough to be accessible. I might not always want to go, but it’s nice to know that I can change my mind.
- And finally, I need to have positive relationships around me that support my occasional bout of solitude and don’t make me feel guilty about it.
If these conditions aren’t met, solitude can feel more like a prison instead of a peaceful retreat.
In my experience with feeling alone, I would usually forget that everything I experienced was a product of my own choices. I made the decision to uproot my life, and I also made the decision to remain reserved and not push myself to interact with new people. I held firmly to my comfort zone. I sometimes made the decision to avoid plans. Today, I like to remind myself of what a luxury it is to have the freedom to choose to be alone or to be in company.
Although I didn’t have a large group of party friends living nearby or the option to make epic hiking plans to a waterfall or to host the dinner parties of my fantasies, in that season, what I did have was freedom. And I could decide what to do with it.
As Charles Bukowski wrote, “When nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
In such scenarios, I prefer to embrace solitude with open arms, and when loneliness occasionally drops in, I allow myself to actually feel its sting. This experience then serves as a friendly reminder the next time I find myself choosing solitude over social interaction for no valid reason. It helps me figure out which way to go the next time I have to choose between company or quiet contemplation.
I have nobody to call my own; I’m so lonely.
This section is about loneliness.
And if you thought I was done with my Akon analogy, you are sorely mistaken because he taught us that loneliness isn’t just a lack of company – it’s the lack of a specific type of company.
For Akon, it was the lack of his girl (or, indeed, any girl) right by his side. And for me, in that season, it was the absence of close friends.
The loneliness that stemmed from this kind of lack was very specific. I didn’t want just any connection; I wanted a specific type of connection. I felt lonely for something in particular. I wanted my old, familiar group of friends to plug and play in this new chapter of my life.
I didn’t want the discomfort of getting to know someone and putting in the work. I’d already done that, and it took me years to find my people, and I simply wanted them transplanted here so I didn’t have to start all over.
One day, I found myself in a slump of loneliness coupled with an itch to overshare, and I met with a friend to complain that I had nobody to hang out with or talk to. They empathized and let me whine for a bit. It felt great. The amusing paradox of what happened wasn’t lost on me – I’d just reached out to someone to voice my sorrows about having no one to reach out to.
And that’s almost always the case. Even when I do have people, I’m just afraid to initiate contact. It’s easier to whine about the fact that I have nobody than it is to face my fears of building new relationships.
I decided that day that I never actually wanted to experience that nobody-to-call feeling, so I made a list of people I did have as a reminder to myself. It was, unsurprisingly, a fairly long list of family and friends that I loved dearly. Whenever I feel like I have nobody, I look at that list and feel better. Sometimes I even put in the work and message them.
I don’t beat myself up about that silly interaction because the thing is, even the act of calling someone to tell them that you feel like you have nobody to call is a meaningful way to connect.
When we share our fears, we can begin to dismantle all the awkward layers of shame that surround loneliness. Practicing your solitude is great, but sometimes we also need to practice sharing the difficult parts of our life with the people willing to meet us with empathy and honesty.
Wrapping up
This section is about wrapping up.
Today, three-ish (WOW) years later, my life has changed dramatically. I’m no longer the city girl in a new town; I belong here. I’ve weathered the loneliness and turned some of it into growth (and some of it into garbage).
Loneliness is no longer a barrier to connection but a bridge to either connect with others or connect with myself. Sometimes both. It’s like a liminal space or a time of transition before I decide which way I ought to go. I’m grateful for the solitude I experienced and the awkwardness of feeling lonely. I no longer view it as a creepy intruder but as a familiar visitor that brings an opportunity for growth and reflection.
(No Akon, you need to do better than that)
I’ll leave you with an image that helped me process loneliness when I was young. It’s from a book called “Letters to a Young Poet” written by a German-Austrian poet named Rainer Maria Rilke to a 19-year-old aspiring poet. I was 19 when I first read it, and I liked to pretend that the letters were written to me.
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
As a Christian, I was familiar with the notion of an all-encompassing love that I could rely on being stored up for me like an inheritance. But this excerpt gave me a picture of a big net cast by the real people in my life that cared for me. The net extended far and wide across timezones and latitudes and seasons and circumstances. I could feel the proximity of those that loved me, and I could draw from their affection whenever I wanted.
Although personal growth can feel like a solitary exercise, whenever I feel lonely, I picture that large net of love laid out by the people that have my back, and I’m just there chilling in it.
I remind myself that I can “travel as far as I wish without having to step outside it.” It’s a happy picture. It’s also cheesy as heck, but Akon literally called himself Mr. Lonely in a song and don’t even try to tell me that’s not way more cringe.
Unfinished Conversations 
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