Discovering Solitude.

I’ve always known my parents as independent people. Yes, they were married for many years, but when I really think about it, they spent many more years living alone than they ever did together. And I don’t mean just alone in the sense of being single - I mean alone as in nobody else in the house, nobody to come home to, nobody to share the small, everyday things with. I never truly considered the weight of that until I found myself in a similar space.

No, I am not entirely alone like the both of them were… I have my son. But let’s be honest, he’s 15 and any parent of a teenager knows that they mostly exist in the periphery, tucked away in their rooms, emerging only for food or the occasional grunt of acknowledgement.

Truth be told, I have always been someone who enjoys their own company. I am hyper-aware of other people’s energy, and if I’m around too many people for too long… shopping malls, social gatherings, even some one-on-one conversations with certain people - I feel depleted, like a dishcloth that’s been twisted one too many times. Solitude, for me, is often a choice. A way to recharge.

But this level of solitude, being entirely alone all the time - is something different. It’s… whats the word… “vast” - unfiltered, and sometimes brutally relentless. It sneaks up on me in quiet moments, settles in like a weight on my chest. It tugs at old wounds, stirs up thoughts I’d rather not face. And yet, here I am, facing them.

I think a lot of people avoid their own thoughts at all costs. It’s easier to drown them out with the noise of life - work, social media and acquaintance style relationships that only half-fit. I get it. It’s tempting - and it is definitely easier… But I have had had no real choice but to sit with it all lately... And the more I do, the more I realise that solitude, for all its (often less than pretty) starkness, brings a kind of clarity that nothing else does - and I like clarity!

I don’t want to live in avoidance. I don’t want to be tossed around by life, always scrambling to find my footing, or not knowing what to say or where to turn because I have been less than true with myself. I want to know myself fully, to stand firm in what I feel, to live in a way that is real and whole. Because if there’s one thing this silence is teaching me hour by hour, it’s that there’s something deeply grounding about knowing who you are when no one else is watching.