Solitude is when you’re comfortable with your own company, not intimidated by it- that’s when it degenerates into loneliness.

A dull roar rises out of the distance, sets the window-panes rattling- an aeroplane winging its way into the night, giving you its company, or intruding on your peace, for a few brief seconds. The air conditioner’s relentless hum fills the room, and you turn up the volume on the television. The subtitles impose themselves on your eyes, and you cannot help but read them. Dinner for one, and it’s done and dispensed with. A bar of chocolate lies tantalizingly in the mini-fridge, but a nagging toothache- the precursor of wisdom- holds you back every time you start to rise from your bed. Potato chips, biscuits, chocolate, noodles- a bachelor girl in a new city.

A three-day long weekend beckons and you have absolutely no idea what you are going to do with yourself. This is the kind of unpredictability to live for, the chance at adventure, if you can only make up your mind to go out and seek it- because there always are those relative comfort zones, even in unknown places, that the quiet nature takes refuge in. Your roommate is on a bus, off on that long-awaited trip home, and you have the whole room to yourself- total privacy. What more can you want, especially when you have the most perfect book in your bag- After Dark?

Loneliness is an illusion. Sometimes, there is no better therapy for the tiresomeness of the world than time alone with yourself, in decent quantities.