Loneliness
I realised that most of the stories I’ve written have always dealt with the concept of being alone; never as a bad thing, though the worst it can be is melancholic, but as a trait that somehow belongs to the main characters which they have accepted as part of their being. I could then easily how it echoed the experience of most of my entire life, being a very lonely child who kept to herself. I’m still the same person essentially, I still have mental conversations with myself (I think I’m a very funny conversationalist; too bad my social anxiety prevents most people other than my friends from enjoying it), but I’ve accepted this constant trait of being alone and managed to turn it into something that opens doors for me to experience the world in ways I wouldn’t have noticed (try being in a field looking at the clouds passing by! That’s my positive association with being alone).
Being in an age where everyone is connected everywhere and talking to everyone every time (Facebook, anyone?), it can make us more afraid of being alone than we already naturally are. We all have a need to belong to each other. At the same time though we need to learn how to belong to ourselves, and personally I find that it’s a very important especially with so many things going on we could very easily lose ourselves. Having a rich inner life is just as important as having a rich outer life, and they both inform each other.
*I may have jumbled up loneliness and being alone as being the same thing. Yeah I know!! It’s just how I experienced it; sometimes I really hate how I’m unable to easily make friends, which often makes me feel negatively isolated especially in a new environment (I was ALONE in college for a year until I found my clique). It’s terrible. But still things worked out in the end. Until it does though, make a friend out of yourself in the meantime.