According to research, humans need interaction with other humans even if the desire isn’t always there. The need for companionship is engrained in our collective DNA and the pain that comes from feeling lonely is a hard proof. However, there are the lucky few who constantly find themselves dealing with the pains of hunger for a companion for almost every friend they have made had never been genuine, and the one friend they’ve got is loneliness.

Believe it or not, that’s a blessing more than a curse.

Throughout my short twenty-four laps around the sun, I’ve seen friends come and go like dirty underwear stains washing away in the washing machine. As I got older, I wanted so much to not be lonely that I lowered my standards of self-respect at the hands of people who were merely fillers in the space. My years of hell were my last two years of college and one year abroad in which I had become codependent on the idealization of having someone to be there for me because the sounds of silence in my apartment made me mad. However, I am ten times stronger for I have learnt to be my own hero when people had then and still now let me down.

Through being lonely, my inner voice became my flashlight in the darkest of tunnels. If my eyes are cameras then loneliness has donated me filters to see through an altered reality we all live in. My hunger pains had become the cement paving a stronger ground for my fragile feet to trail upon. And you want to know exactly why and how? Because at the end of the day, you are the one who has to live with yourself and that harsh pill to swallow becomes a soluble tablet since you’re so used to taking it down dry all of your life.

So I will continue to accept my loneliness and even more so dance with it. I will grab it by the balls and make it my bitch. When another friend or lover comes and then fades away so quick, I already know who to call on speed dial and that’s one is the one who never hits it and quits. To whoever feels the same, I hope this article helped you to realize that you can stand on you’re own two feet, and that you are ten times stronger than you feel.