Loneliness vs Solitude

Alone. The word can be positive or it can be negative. It can stir within you a feeling of fear or excitement. Having been travelling on my own for four months now, I have had my fair share of alone time. For the most part, I find it empowering, exciting, easy. But there are times when I feel so alone I have to fight the urge to jump on the next plane home where I can be surrounded by people who know me and love me.
 
   Alone. On one side we have solitude. On the other; loneliness. On one side we have the positive and on the other, the negative.

    Solitude is having a meal alone and being completely content in your own company. Solitude is wandering through the streets of an unknown city and getting completely and utterly lost, but feeling nothing but exhilaration because you are responsible to no one and have absolutely nowhere to be. Solitude is staying in on a rainy day and watching 10 episodes of Orange is the New Black because you feel like it. Solitude is amazing. It's necessary. It's getting to know yourself the way another might get to know you, by simply spending time with you.

    Loneliness, on the other hand, is having your heart broken and having no one to wipe your tears. Loneliness is being sick and having no one nearby who even knows you, let alone will hold your hair back while you are violently ill. Loneliness is being in a group of people who are all having fun and feeling like an outsider. Loneliness is dark. Loneliness is empty. But loneliness, too, is necessary.

     See, solitude and loneliness are two sides to the same coin. You can't have one without the other.  The amazing, empowering feeling you get when you are alone is only there because you realize that you have surpassed loneliness. You are content in your own company. There is no one else on earth you would rather be sharing this moment with than you. Of course we need others in our lives. When times are difficult, especially. But to know that you can always count on yourself and to be comfortable with that, that's the kind of alone I am becoming unable to live without.