why solitude still hurts, even though i love myself

the sacred ache of being unmet and the beauty of choosing solitude anyway

why does solitude feel so painfully charged, even for those who are deeply self-connected?

The Vast Depth Sheri Gee

this has been on my mind for weeks. not just what loneliness is, but why it feels so charged, even when we are self-loving and surrounded. this isn’t just about spiritual solitude — it’s about that moment when you’re in a room full of people and your chest still tightens with the sense that no one actually sees you.

i wanted to write this letter not as an illustration of "aloneness" but as a doorway. an atmosphere that asks the reader to enter the depths of my mind with me. the strange vastness of solitude within myself, where the field is empty but also strangely full — layered with memory, pulse, and spirit. not a performance of feeling, but a field of inquiry. this is not about being alone. it’s about why being alone feels the way it does — even when we are surrounded. even when we love ourselves. even when we are technically not alone at all.

this is about the paradox of solitude: that we can be deeply self-connected, self-resourced, even fulfilled — and still ache. this ache is not confusion. it is information. a signal from the body, the psyche, the soul. and to ignore it, or oversimplify it with platitudes, is to miss something essential about what it means to be human.

loneliness is not weakness. it is not a character flaw. it is not a phase to rush through. it is an evolutionary inheritance. it is a biological signal. it is a portal to discernment. and sometimes, it is a quiet sign that we are no longer willing to be in proximity with what does not nourish.

there are moments, soft and stark, when the world goes quiet and we find ourselves alone in the room. no one speaking. no one touching. just us. our breath. our thoughts. our noticing. and yet, we are not alone, by ourselves. are we?

no, we’re not.

even in our most private, solitary moments, something is always with us. a presence. a memory. a pulse. a breath not just our own. sometimes it’s the echo of someone we loved, a conversation that lives in the walls of the psyche. sometimes it’s the whisper of who we’re becoming, a future self sending smoke signals back through time. sometimes it’s the unseen—spirit, ancestor, source, however you may choose to name it—brushing up against the edges of our aloneness like wind.

so why does it hurt? why, if all humans know this experience of being alone, does it still feel, when we’re in it, like we’re the only one? why does loneliness feel so singular, so sharp, when it’s one of the most universal human conditions? as if everyone else has some sort of manual or toolbox to ride the waves of loneliness, or even protect themselves from it? what an illusion.

maybe it’s because knowing others have felt it is not the same as feeling with someone in the moment you’re drowning. loneliness isn’t always about being alone. it’s about not being met. not being felt. not having your inner world cradled in someone else’s hands, right when it aches the most.

we want our solitude to be witnessed. not interrupted. not filled. just seen. because what often hurts isn’t the emptiness of a room, it’s the feeling that no one in the world sees the shape of our pain. we become invisible inside our own ache. and the deeper truth? we don’t just want company. we want resonance.

the ache of the discerning heart

what if your loneliness is proof that your soul refuses to be placated by shallow presence? some of us don’t fear aloneness. we fear dilution. we fear sitting beside someone who makes more noise in our heads than the quiet ever did.

you might not be the black sheep (i certainly feel like one, more often than not). you might be the one who hears differently. feels differently. requires a different kind of silence—one that listens back. and that’s why no matter how many people are beside you, you often don’t want to stay beside them. because they don’t know how to be with you in the way you know how to be with yourself. it may read as arrogance, but i perceive it as intimacy. that’s you being loyal to your own soul.

there’s a kind of discernment that looks like isolation but is actually devotion. the devotion to not betray your own pace. the devotion to not sit beside someone whose presence feels like performance. the devotion to keep company with your own mind because your thoughts have become beloved companions. this isn’t being antisocial. this is reverence — for yourself. for how well you’ve learned to sit with truth. for the way you’ve stayed honest, transparent, and attuned to your own interior, even when no one else could meet you there.

neuroscience confirms this: when we are with someone whose nervous system is dysregulated or misattuned, our own system must work overtime to maintain its inner rhythm. being in proximity with others is not inherently nourishing — it depends on how they are. how we are with them. for the sensitive nervous system, presence is not passive. it is an energetic event.

the nervous system still remembers

but here’s the paradox. even as we learn to savor solitude, our body still remembers something older. more animal. more infant. your nervous system—that biological instrument—was designed for co-regulation. we were wired for attunement. heartbeat to heartbeat. voice to voice. skin to skin.

before language, before thought, before all of our experiences, we learned what it meant to be safe through the gaze of another. through the arms that held us (or didn’t). through the breath that soothed our trembling lungs. so now, when we are somatically, spiritually, deeply alone, our body remembers the ache of what it once needed to survive. and it sends us signals. where are they who once cradled me? who sees me now?

it’s not neediness. it’s memory. even the most self-nourished soul occasionally longs to be fed by the gaze of another. even the most self-sourced root reaches to feel sunlight touch its leaves.

neuroscience confirms the human brain's reliance on social connection for emotional regulation. the anterior cingulate cortex, for example, is the part of the brain that processes both physical pain and the emotional pain of rejection — and it responds to social exclusion as if it were physical injury. the body does not distinguish between a broken arm and a broken belonging. this is why your loneliness aches in your chest. this is why your breath shortens, your stomach knots, your limbs go cold when your heart hurts. the body is keeping score of what the psyche experiences or sometimes cannot resolve.

you don’t need everyone to understand you. but you need someone who won’t flinch at the depth of your interior. you’re not hard to please. you just don’t want to perform. you’re not too solitary. you’re too attuned to pretend. you don’t want company. you want kinship. there’s a difference between being alone and being unmet. and your nervous system knows it — just as intimately as your conscious mind does.

the soul’s original loneliness

there’s a mythic loneliness too, older than childhood, older than heartbreak, older even than biology. the soul remembers being part of something whole. call it source. call it god. call it the collective cosmic breath. and to be born, to incarnate, was, in a way, to be separated. to be a self is to be a fragment. and so even in your most connected moments, there may always live a tiny echo of exile.

but what if even that ache is sacred? what if it’s the compass, the breadcrumb trail of the seeker within you, the song that calls you inward again and again so you don’t forget—your soul was made for reunion.

i wrote a note the other day: your calling’s got backup numbers. if you ignore one, it just reroutes.

and maybe that reunion, the constant reroute, is not with another person, but with the sacred field inside yourself. the field where presence, memory, spirit, and breath all coexist. a place where no performance is needed. only listening.

you are listening for music others stopped trying to hear. you are not aloof. you’re just protecting the most tender frequency of your spirit. you are not unreachable. you are waiting for the one who approaches with silence instead of noise, with slowness instead of strategy, with eyes that ask nothing but can i be here, exactly as you are you’re still waiting for the note that hums back in recognition. until then, keep choosing yourself. keep choosing your thoughts. keep choosing the conversations you have with the trees and the stars and the part of you that never settled or compromised your energy entirely.

even in your deepest solitude, you are not alone. there is something, someone, always sitting just beside your ache.

---

let this be your soft journal question, if it feels good to carry it: is my loneliness a wound or a form of integrity? is it asking for connection or protecting my own resonance? is it a hunger or a boundary? and how does my body respond when i honor it as sacred, rather than shameful?

i return to these questions often. sometimes when i feel the ache rise, i don’t try to explain it away. i don’t rush to solve it. i simply acknowledge: you’re here again. i breathe deeper into my own presence, or i exhale out of the anxiety. i write. i let myself be seen by myself first. and most of the time, that’s enough.

i’ve also become really good at staring blankly — into the sky, the ceiling, a patch of light on the wall. not to escape, but because i’ve trained my nervous system to stay. to not fill the quiet. to let it speak back. it’s not easy. but i trust myself now. and the more i’ve stayed true to what feels real, the more i’ve found people who can sit beside me without needing me to be anything else. i’m meeting new friends, new community — and they seem closer and closer to the one i’ve always longed for: the friend who doesn’t flinch at the quiet, or the ache, or the truth of who i am in this chapter of life.

if this letter stirred something in you — you’re not alone in that either. this field we’re walking through? i’m in it too.
and if you want a few ways to reconnect back to self, skim this.
x,
cibelle