Solitude

“Loneliness”, a feeling that scares me like hell … One might wonder how this scares. Yes, it does indeed, at least me. This brings all genres of ghosts to my mind in the form of memories, the good, the bad, the ugly and the best moments I had. There are times when it sort of pulls at your heart in such a sad, blue, painful, gut wrenching sort of way. This is haunting me from months and now it’s even more than never and not sure how long it persists.

One of the first recorded uses of the word "lonely" was in William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Act IV Scene 1. This tells, it existed way back in different forms. Loneliness is a feeling where people experience a powerful surge of emptiness and solitude.

Loneliness is not the same as being alone. Many people have times when they are alone through circumstances or choice. Being alone can be experienced as positive, pleasurable, and emotionally refreshing if it is under the individual's control. Solitude is the state of being alone and secluded from other people, and often implies having made a conscious choice to be alone. Loneliness does not require aloneness and is often experienced even in crowded places. It can be described as the absence of identification, understanding or compassion. **

Loneliness is of two kinds, (1) Emotional Loneliness (2) Social Loneliness.
I speak about “Emotional Loneliness” coz this is what everyone undergoes at some point of life more than the second one, irrespective of reasons. Emotional Loneliness is more than the feeling of wanting company or wanting to be with someone whom you love / like or who loves / likes you for ever. Many times I wonder what it is about humans that just can’t allow people to lead one’s life of their choice, always poking their nose troubling them, separating them, making lives miserable just for the heck of their selfish, foolish and immature thoughts. I am no exception to this. At times, I feel, my efforts were not strong enough to overcome them for which I am into this emotional seclusion.

Feeling alone can be a healthy emotion and, indeed, choosing to be alone for a period of solitude can be enriching, but the experience of loneliness is always an unbearable feeling of separateness, rejection, hopelessness, unworthiness, anxiety and resentment at a profound level. Hence, I mentioned, Loneliness is not the same as being alone. One has to come out of this feeling before it lasts longer, because it eats the life, nope, “beautiful life” which we cannot get back later …

** - Paragraph taken from Wikipedia