Loneliness and it’s definition: “sadness because one has no friends or company”. I disagree with this completely. Well, maybe not completely. I do agree that loneliness means no friends or company, but I do not agree that loneliness is sad–at least not all the time. Well, I guess loneliness has two definitions. I should have read the whole dictionary entry before I started writing this. The second definition is “the quality of being unfrequented and remote; isolation.” This refers to a place though so I guess I was right before. The first definition is based on emotion, and I disagree with that definition. For I am alone, but I am neither sad nor depressed and I am proud.

Growing up, I bet your parents yelled at you at least once to stop watching TV or going online and to go outside and make friends. My parents didn’t exactly yell at me. It was more of subtle messages. They never said it, but they always gave me this look whenever my brothers and sister were out with their friends and I was at home just relaxing and doing my own thing. I mean I did have friends, but we rarely hang out outside of the school setting except if it was a sleepover or birthday party. I don’t mind being alone actually, but when I was younger and starting elementary school, everywhere I go: everyone was hanging out with everybody else. Maximum: I had two friends. Anymore and it started to get weird. People would be excluded from a conversation because it got turned towards a different subject before they can say what they wanted, and somebody would get mad that they weren’t invited to somewhere with someone. It was just a mess.

Large groups are uncomfortable. I remember moving to Cresco and my first month at school, I was wedged between two girls at the lunch table overfilling with kids and all I could hear was high pitched ‘Blah Blah Blah’s. Large groups are very uncomfortable, even if it’s just four or five people. You always feel like you’re going to be the excluded one that everyone ignores and you just sit there. Then everyone labels you the quiet one because they kicked you out of the conversation, which when you listened to, wasn’t as interesting as TV advertised.

One major factor that makes you believe friendship will make you happy is TV. Every show on TV makes everyone on the show friends and they always make fun of the loner or make the loner be their friend. Yes, I know it’s teaching kids to get out of their comfort zone and a show without people interacting would be boring, but you’re a kid. If you’re a kid who just doesn’t want friends and you see all these things that tell you “Get a Friend” you’re going to start feeling like you’re not normal. I didn’t feel normal seeing all these friendships and hearing “My friend did this” or “Oh my friend is good at”.  And you hear about bullying, you see it on TV, you see it at school, and you’re always warned about it. Bullies pick on the kids with no friends, so subliminally, messages are sent into your head saying “Friends = Normal” and if you have no friends, you go into a panic. You try to make friends, but you don’t want to randomly pick someone and later find out that that person is just the worst and you wish you never met them. You want someone you’ll be cool with because if you choose the wrong person first and say I don’t want to be friends right off the bat, people are going to think you’re the bully because apparently it’s not okay to say you don’t want to be friends with someone you literally have nothing in common with and has a personality you just don’t want to deal with.

It’s nothing personal, really. You can’t be friends with everyone. There has to be a limit, even for the person who wants all the friends in the world because if your two friends are in a fight, you have to either pick a side or fix it. Most likely, if you try to fix it, it’ll become worse because not everybody is born a therapist. Some people just have that power. And if you pick a side, you have people who agree with you, but you also have a fleet of angry students who now want you dead for being a traitor. And it’s not just making your friends like each other. You also have to get them to like you. Everyone likes different things including different people. Some people like sweethearts who are always helpful and never start any trouble, but there are people who like the opposite: tough, rebellious, wild. You can’t be both. Sure you can walk the halfway point between them but what about the other categories? You’ve got people who want a leader, who want a follower, a perfectionist, a chill slacker who doesn’t give a care, a protective nurturing person who does care. You can’t walk the halfway line between that because there is no halfway line. You have to be one or the other. There is literally no logical way to appeal to everybody without going against or losing yourself.

There’s no shame in wanting to be alone. I can see where some people will find it offensive or traitorous. On the offended side, there are people who believe that to make the world a better place, everyone needs a friend so no one will feel lonely and become a super villain because they think it’s everyone else’s fault they can’t get a girlfriend. They see loneliness as a bad trait, which it’s not. I mean they have insane asylums where they keep everyone by themselves in a locked room to calm them down. People get lost up in the mountain to access everlasting enlightenment. They never do that with friends. They go alone. Now there are people who see closed-off people as traitors for many different reasons. One reason is that they think the loner doesn’t want to be their friend like they hate them or something, but really, the loner is just not interested. They can see loners as people who are only being lonely so they can get attention, which sometimes is the case but you need to make sure before you make an assumption. Another reason is more on the roles people think they should commit to as human beings. Some people believe that marriage and kids are a part of being human and it’s their duty to do this. When they see someone not doing this, they get this feeling that this person is being selfish and traitorous by not following their duty as a human being and meeting a man or woman they can have a child with.

Being a loner does have its criticism as I reviewed, but it does have its advantages too. You don’t have to feel obliged to buy a gift for a friend for their birthday or Christmas. You don’t have to feel like whatever you say could offend your friend who might be a different race or a religion. You don’t have to be a yes-man because you don’t want to hurt your friends’ feeling. You don’t have to listen to everyone else’s problems and can focus on fixing your own issues. You don’t have to feel like your being held back or your holding anyone back. You can grow as a person in your own way. You can take a breather and enjoy yourself if that’s how you feel. There’s no shame in being alone and taking time for yourself. You don’t always need a friend to be happy. If you hate crowded places and Chatty Cathie’s, just take a step back and breath, ask yourself: Do I feel better alone or do I feel better around people?

I, for one, do not feel better around people, especially here. Everyone I’ve ever met is someone I talk to every once in a while or someone I never want to look at again. Everyone else is just everyone else. I don’t care if I ever talk to them. I’m not saying they aren’t important, they’re just not that important to me. I don’t feel a need to go up to them and ask them their life story. I get more blissful emotions from watching a cartoon than I do around most people. The emotions I feel around these people are as followed: anger, annoyance, regret, numb, irritation, headaches. I’m just not interested in their boring or sexual conversation. All I want is to be left alone, and before you say “Oh but friends will make you so happy”, “You’ll feel better when you open up to people”, or “How about you try it first”, I’d like to say I have tried this. I’ve tried to make friendships on my own will without chance and I’ve tried a steady relationship. I hated it. If I’m not sitting with someone I can tolerate at lunch, I’m squished between sweaty guys or giggling girls who talk about boring stuff I have no interest in what so ever. I don’t care about hunting or sports or how many girls you think you’ve slept with. I tried the couple scene. I got a boyfriend and at first it was cool because the guy seemed nice but then he became clingy, he only talked about what he wanted, he never let me talk. Now before you say “that’s just one guy out of billions”, I’d like to point out that I felt the peer pressure of dates, meeting the parents, holiday get-togethers. I didn’t want to go. I hated the feeling of the family and their friends judging me and hating me if I broke up with my boyfriend. I wanted to end it for four months and I couldn’t because I didn’t know how to get out of it without hurting someone’s feeling. It had to come to my parents asking me about my relationship and causing me to cry out “I hate it!” I was absolutely miserable in a relationship. I never want to be that miserable again.

So to recap: It’s okay to be lonely if that’s what you’re most comfortable with. If you want a ton of friends, go ahead but don’t force people to be your friend, especially people who aren’t very social and enjoy their anti-social pathway of life. People have the right to choose how they live and interact with other people. You shouldn’t deny that. People are who they are and they just do what they do. Hey! We’re human. It’s what we do best.