I began to realize it wasn’t those quiet moments alone in my apartment that I dreaded, it’s that moment on Monday morning when my coworker asks what I did over the weekend.

There’s Nothing Wrong With Spending Time Alone on Weekends

“When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

Being alone can be the most empowering experience of your life. If you let the loneliness consume you, you’re going to lose that rare chance to figure yourself out. You can always find company in yourself. Loneliness is going to try to force you to find that company with another person. Everyone has a place in the world, though, and yours shouldn’t be inside someone else.

The Difference Between Being Alone And Being Lonely

“The greatest paralysis – the greatest form of being paralyzed – is loneliness.”

—Fr. Daniel Fanous

I kept noticing a self-help cliché that people say to each other all the time, and share on Facebook incessantly. We say to each other: “Nobody can help you except you.” It made me realize: we haven’t just started doing things alone more, in every decade since the 1930s. We have started to believe that doing things alone is the natural state of human beings, and the only way to advance. We have begun to think: I will look after myself, and everybody else should look after themselves, as individuals. Nobody can help you but you. Nobody can help me but me. These ideas now run so deep in our culture that we even offer them as feel-good bromides to people who feel down—as if it will lift them up. But John has proven that this is a denial of human history, and a denial of human nature. It leads us to misunderstand our most basic instincts. And this approach to life makes us feel terrible.

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

I’m a lone wolf.

I’m a hermit.

I’ve been that way for a long time.

…

And, yet, I love being around people. After meeting a friend for coffee, I feel inspired and soul-fed. After attending River of Lights or some other festive event with my daughter and grandson, I feel energized.

But my default setting is to be alone.

Now I’m Invisible Only on Sundays

I absolutely love “You’re the Best” from the first album. The first lines really struck me: “All I know is / when you hold me / I still feel lonely / lonely when you hold me.” Can you explain them a bit?

I wrote that song when I was at a point in a relationship that I often get to in relationships: I’m there. I am finally with the person I wanted to be with. And then he falls asleep and I realize I’m still alone. As much as I try and want to be bonded with this person, the dominant feeling that I feel at all times is a loneliness. It just doesn’t go away. And I think that resonated for a lot of people. Relationships doesn’t make that go away. You can be more lonely in a relationship sometimes than you would be on your own.

We had brunch with Kelly Zutrau from the band Wet—and talked about almost everything

“Loneliness hangs over our culture today like a thick smog.”

—Johann Hari, Lost Connections

“The last word of philosophy is loneliness.”

—Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation: On Pessimism