I was born to be the kind of person that couldn't understand why people enjoy having alone time. It never made sense to me, partially because I'm the type of person that gets lonely ridiculously easily, and partially because I find happiness in being around other people. I could never imagine living without a roommate, and the silence that comes with me being alone in my room always bothered me.
Until more recently, these thoughts and feelings bothered me since I was a little kid. It wasn't until I came to college that I realized how much you can gain from spending some time alone. You truly come to understand yourself better, and spending time with yourself is more rewarding than exhausting yourself to be with others just so you don't have to be alone. As much as we don't want to believe it, we do act differently when we are around other people. We try so hard to keep things light when we're around others, and we end up being only about twenty-five percent of who we truly are, which isn't fair to ourselves in the grand scheme of things. We owe it to ourselves to spend a decent amount of time alone, so we can explore who we are as people, and learn to accept our tendencies as humans.
As a society, we always seem to glorify extending ourselves until exhaustion for other people, and never saying "no" to others. Putting others before ourselves is honorable and equally as generous, but we should never have to be martyrs for others at the expense of our own selves. It is unfair to yourself if you force yourself to go out on Friday and Saturday nights just to make others happy, or to avoid spending a night alone. All you do in this is exhaust your psyche, and you gain nothing out of forcing yourself to do something for reasons that will not benefit you in the long run.
One of my favorite sayings is that you can't learn to love someone else until you truly love yourself. If you can't learn who you truly are in being alone, your love for yourself is only surface deep. You would only learn to love the things others bring up to you, instead of discovering the things that you love about yourself through self exploration. You actually do a favor for others by being alone, because being honest with yourself allows you to be honest with other people.
Solitude is inspiring in the best of ways, because in solitude you are free from the influence of your friends, and free from being bothered. You don't have to pretend like you're in a good mood, or having a good day. You can be upset, you can cry, you can release negativity in the comfortable presence of just yourself and in turn feel better because you didn't have to hold it in, just because you were with other people. Learn to embrace being alone, because it is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself.
