I recently finished the “it year” — my freshman year of college. Lots of nights to remember — laughter shared, experiences gained. At first, it felt like being placed in a setting with constant stimulation. There was always something going on — late night Taco Bell runs, gossip, football games, wine Wednesdays, going out for three-day benders — you name it. It sounds exciting at first, and honestly, it was. But after a while, I felt like something was off.
It never was anything obvious. More like a soft static in the background of every moment. A quiet question that kept asking, ‘Why doesn’t this feel like enough?’ I brushed it off for a while, convincing myself I was just tired or overstimulated. However, the feeling didn’t go away, it just lingered.
It wasn’t until I started spending more time by myself that things began to shift. I initially would go on long walks to explore different parts of campus. Go on coffee runs alone. Study alone. Wander around aimlessly in stores alone. Sit by the lake, just enjoying the presence of Earth. I wasn’t lonely, not in the conventional sense at least. I was surrounded by people constantly. I was genuinely happy too. I felt alone in a different way. The kind that sneaks in during the loudest moments. The kind that doesn’t necessarily feel sad, just a little heavy.
Slowly, I began to realize that maybe this wasn’t something to fix. This was the start of something. Solitude didn’t come with fireworks. It came quietly, like an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while. As I leaned into it more, I realized solitude wasn’t just something I tolerated, it was something I craved. It grounded me. It gave me the space to think, like really think. It helped me sort through the mental chaos I didn’t even realize I had been carrying.
Being alone didn’t make me less, it made me whole. I could finally hear my own voice. I could actually understand what I believed, what I valued and what I wanted. Solitude taught me how to emotionally regulate. How to pause before reacting. How to sit with my thoughts instead of scrambling to fill the silence.
You know how a song hits the spot when it’s placed at the right place, right time and during the right mood, but then it can sound like an absolute headache to your ears other times? The actual song didn’t change. The way you responded to it did. People are like songs. Sometimes they aren’t the problem. Solitude gave me the clarity to realize that. Some of the people I once thought were too much or not enough weren’t necessarily wrong for me, they just didn’t meet me at the right moment. And sometimes, neither did I.
The peace of solitude isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s gritty. You find out which of your thoughts are just echoes, and which ones are actually yours. You learn that solitude is not the absence of love, but instead, the presence of self.
Some people fear being alone because they’re afraid of what they’ll hear in the silence. But I think it’s that very silence where we come home to ourselves. You’ve heard it before but I’ll say it again: the only person you spend forever with is yourself. Might as well make it worthwhile.
