There are always friends who can’t be apart, who talk constantly, and share every itty bitty detail of their lives with one another. And sorry, but that’s just not me.

I believe in healthy distance from friends. As an introvert, I need my time by myself. In fact, I treasure my time by myself. I love sitting by myself and watching some YouTube videos, or writing about my day. It is always healthy to have time to oneself and to have time to reflect on the day’s events. I don’t feel the constant need to be by my friend’s side, because my friends are adults and they can live without me for a while.

I never really text people first. A lot of people get on me for this because they think it’s rude of me to never text first. To be honest, the way that I see it is if someone wants to talk to me, they’ll text me first, and if I want to talk to someone, I’ll text them first. Silence doesn’t mean I hate you or I’ve stopped caring or thinking about you - just sometimes I don’t see the need to talk, it’s as simple as that. (Also, crazy thing - you can always text me first. You can’t really get on my back for not texting you first if you’ve never bothered to text me first.)

Self-disclosure is a very personal thing that I’m not entirely comfortable doing with every single person I’m friends with. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, self-disclosure is when you reveal something somewhat deep and personal about yourself; something you wouldn’t tell a total stranger because it’s information about yourself that you’d like to keep hidden. My issue with self-disclosure is that I’ve learned my lesson several times that you can’t trust everyone with your information. I would much rather keep my own thoughts and feelings to myself if it means that I won’t be patronized or looked down upon by others. Not to say that all of the things that I could possibly self-disclose would make people look down upon me or put me to shame, but if it’s my personal information that I entrusted in you, it shouldn’t blow back in my face when I tell you what it is.

The fact that I don’t self-disclose to you doesn’t mean that I don’t like you - it simply just means I’d rather keep things to myself, and that’s my right as an individual.

In closing, I guess my big message here is that when people want their alone time, you should just give it to them. It should never be a task for you to allow friends to be by themselves for awhile - sometimes that’s all we need to feel okay and come back into ourselves again as people. And please, never feel guilty for wanting to be alone - if being alone is what makes you happy, then you go do it, because you deserve to feel happy.