Loneliness Isn’t Always Being Alone

I’m actually very good at being alone.

I say that because I think people have this very strange idea that being alone automatically means being lonely. It doesn’t. I can take myself out for dinner. I can sit at a restaurant by myself, eat my food, look around, listen to music, judge people’s orders in my head and have a perfectly nice evening. I can watch a movie alone. I can go to a show alone. I can go for Garba alone and dance alone because with or without people I dance till i drop. I can make my own plans, go somewhere, figure things out and come back home without feeling like I have been abandoned by society.

And I genuinely like doing it.

I’m self-sufficient. I like knowing that if I want to do something, I can just do it. I don’t have to sit around waiting for someone to be free. If everyone has plans, fine. I’ll go. If nobody wants to watch the movie, I’ll watch it. If nobody wants to go out, I’ll still go out. I have absolutely no interest in putting my life on hold because everyone else is busy.

But that isn’t really what loneliness is for me.

Loneliness is much more irritating than that.

Because you can be completely fine being alone and then have a day where being alone feels completely different.

You can have friends. You can have people who love you. You can have a family who would probably drop everything for you. You can have conversations every day and still have this weird, inexplicable feeling that you are just… by yourself.

Just lonely.

And I don’t even know how to explain that without sounding ungrateful.

Because I am not ungrateful.

I have wonderful people in my life. My mum, dad and masi are genuinely the greatest. They’ll ask me to take me somewhere, or come sit with me, or just do something completely ordinary together, and I’ll go. Sometimes that’s all I really want anyway. I don’t need anyone to sit me down and conduct an investigation into why I’m in a mood. Just sit with me. Even if I heavily oppose it.

That’s usually enough.

The strange thing is, though, that the people you love can have their own lives too.

My friends have their lives. I have mine. Everyone is busy. Everybody is doing something. And let’s be honest, the people who have absolutely nothing going on are usually not the people I want to spend my time with anyway. No offence.

So you can go months without seeing someone.

Months.

And it isn’t because you’ve fallen out. It isn’t because you don’t care. It definitely is not because anyone has suddenly decided they hate you. Everyone is just busy being a teen, which is an exhausting full-time occupation. It is just mad.

Then you see each other again and it’s completely normal. You laugh. You talk. You pick up where you left off.

But there were still months in between.

And in those months, things happened.

You had good days they weren’t there for. You had awful days they didn’t know about. You saw something funny and didn’t send it. You went somewhere and they weren’t there. You had a breakdown over something stupid, recovered, moved on and they never even knew it happened.

That’s not necessarily a problem.

But it is a strange feeling.

I’ve had a difficult school life. I don’t really want to romanticise that. Maybe when I’m 27 I’ll look back and laugh at all of it. I’m sure I will. I’ll probably tell some story and say, “Oh my God, I was actually insane,” and everyone will laugh.

But I am not 27. I’m seventeen. Dancing Queen. Dancing in the head are a million brain eating amoebas, jinki sardaar hu mein.

And right now, school isn’t some coming-of-age movie that I’m going to miss terribly once the credits roll. With the tearful goodbyes and my high school sweetheart. Honestly chee.

People keep telling me Grade 12 is going to be emotional because school is ending.

Frankly, I can’t wait for it to end. I am done. Ask me? I don’t want another day at school.

I know that sounds awful.

I know I’m supposed to suddenly become sentimental about corridors and classrooms and uniforms and people I spent twelve years seeing every day. I know there are songs about school friendships that are supposed to make you cry because “we’ll never be this young again” or whatever.

I know you’re supposed to reminisce. I will. Once I probably return to school after being gone for years to see my teachers or possibly give a talk or lecture, one that no one there would listen to lol.

I don’t relate to them.

I don’t think I got the fate of experiencing that kind of school life.

And sometimes that is sad. I don’t want to pretend it isn’t.

There is a very particular sadness in watching other people talk about their school years with this fondness and realising that you don’t have the same thing to look back on. You can listen to someone say, “My school friends are my family,” and think, must be nice.

Not bitterly. Just honestly. I am truly happy people get to experience it!

But weirdly, I also thank my school life for what it has given me.

It made me resilient.

It forced me to get to know myself in ways I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. It taught me that I can be disappointed, broken, thrashed and tired to my core, cry the night, sleep maybe an hour and still get up the next morning and go to school. It taught me that not every person who enters your life is supposed to stay there. It taught me that sometimes you have to make your own fun because waiting for someone else to create it for you is a waste of time.

And, more than anything, it taught me that somewhere at the end of everything, it really is just me for me.

People can disagree with that. That’s fine.

I don’t mean that nobody matters. Of course people matter. My family matters the most to me. My friends matter. I matter to myself.

But I am the only person who is with me every single day.

From the minute I breathe my first breath to the second I take my last.

That is just a fact.

And learning that at this age is a little sad initially but I think as it grows on you, you realise its importance.

I just wish I had learnt it differently.

If I ever have children, (which seems impossible considering i am shit scared of doctors and hospitals and invasive examinations even though I haven’t had any) I really hope they don’t have to learn resilience by being knocked down first.

I want them to be strong. I want them to know themselves. I want them to be able to handle life when it doesn’t go their way. I want them to know that they can stand on their own.

But I want them to learn all of that positively. Learn to stand up but first know what the ground is.

Not through a fall like this.

Because there is only so much a teenager can carry before something has to come out somewhere.

For me, it comes out as tears.

When it gets too much, I cry. Watching a reel of a dog, a homecoming, grandparents (yes i am a softie, i cry and can cry at any moment)

I don’t have a beautiful coping mechanism. I don’t journal my feelings into perfect little paragraphs, make reels about them and post them and suddenly discover the meaning of life. I watch those after im done coping. I ugly cry, red eyes, snot covered tshirt, maybe some rock song playing in my head, I stare at the ceiling, I eventually fall asleep and then I wake up and carry on.

I genuinely can’t even begin to count how many tears my pillow has absorbed this year or how many sniffles my walls have heard.

And before anyone starts with the poor Ambika thing — no.

Absolutely not. I am no damsel in distress here.

I’m not writing this because I want sympathy. I don’t think my life is tragic. I don’t think I’m some uniquely tortured teenager sitting in the dark listening to sad goth music while the world forgets I exist.

It’s just too much sometimes. That’s all.

There is a ridiculous amount happening in a teenager’s life. You’re expected to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life while simultaneously worrying about an exam you have next Thursday. You’re figuring out friendships, your family, yourself, your future, your identity, expectations, applications, school, people, and about seventeen other things nobody bothered to put on the timetable.

And then someone asks, “How was your day?”

“Fine.”

Obviously. What else am I supposed to say? I stubbed my toe this morning, and then i was sweating even after i showered, i was in no mood to study psychology, the teacher didn’t let me sleep, I got my period at 4:45 am, my pillow wasn’t cold enough, a machhar bit me, what? Bro that’s like every student every other day.

Some people seem to handle everything beautifully. They have their lives together, their friendships intact, their schedules planned, their emotions apparently filed alphabetically.

I handle it okay-ish.

I have my days. And my nights.

And some nights are heavier than others.

There are days where I want to be alone. I genuinely do. I want my room, my music, my food, my own thoughts and nobody asking me anything.

And then there are days where I want to be alone but I don’t want to feel alone.

That distinction took me a long time to understand.

Because I don’t always want company. I want familiarity. I want the kind of presence where nobody has to entertain me. I want to be able to sit next to someone and do absolutely nothing and not feel like I have to fill the silence.

Sometimes I want to go out.

Sometimes I want someone else to say, “Come on, we’re going.” Not ask me that oh babe do you wanna go? Just say no excuses picking you up, or calling your mom if you don’t come. Or wtv dude.

Sometimes I want to be asked.

I think we make loneliness sound much more dramatic and devastating than it actually is.

For me, it isn’t sitting in an empty room thinking nobody loves me.

It’s sitting in a room where everyone technically loves me more than themselves and still feeling a little disconnected from the world.

It’s having people and wishing they were closer.

It’s knowing you could call someone but not knowing what you would actually say.

It’s wanting to go somewhere and then not wanting to explain to anyone why you want to go.

It’s having a perfectly good day and then suddenly feeling gloomy at 11:43 p.m. for absolutely no identifiable reason.

And then being annoyed at yourself for being gloomy because technically your life is fine. It is as good as it could get.

Which is possibly the most useless argument you can have with yourself.

“Why are you sad?”

“I don’t know.”

“But everything is fine.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you sad?”

Excellent. Problem solved.

I think that is why I’ve stopped trying to find a reason for every feeling.

And then you wake up and go to school and answer people and laugh at something stupid and get on with your day.

Life continues. Today was one of those days.

I don’t want to talk about it though.

Lol. (Ironic huh?)

Maybe tomorrow or day after I’ll go out alone. Maybe I’ll get food, put my headphones in, walk around somewhere, watch something, dance, do whatever I feel like doing and be completely happy in my own company again.

And that is the thing I am most grateful for.

I know how to be with myself. I love my company.

Haaa! That felt good! I feel better already. God people are right! Writing helps! 🤏🏻

Well, that’s about all I have to say. Idk. Bleh. Okay bye.

As Ever,

Ambika