The last few weeks have been incredibly difficult. There are things happening in my life that I don’t want to write about here, but they have required an enormous amount of emotional and psychological energy. For a while I just kept going because there were things that needed to be done. Appointments, decisions, conversations, practical things. You do what you have to do and somehow your body and your mind keep finding enough energy for the next thing. Until suddenly they don’t.

Today I realised that I don’t just need rest. I need to be alone.

There is a difference. Resting around other people is not necessarily resting. Being with people means allowing other people into your mental space, and right now I don’t have much space left. People have opinions. They have advice. They tell you what they think you should do, what they think you shouldn’t do, what they would do if they were you. They ask questions you might not want to answer. They want explanations. Sometimes they need help themselves. Sometimes they want your attention, your emotional energy, your presence. None of this necessarily makes them bad people. This is simply what happens when human beings are together: we affect each other, we ask things from each other, we bring our own needs into the room.

Usually I can deal with that. Right now, I can’t.

I was supposed to travel today, and I decided not to go. There were several reasons behind that decision, but one of the biggest was incredibly simple: I realised I needed to stay by myself. I could already imagine arriving and immediately entering everybody else’s world. Hearing opinions about my life. Being told what I should or shouldn’t do. Answering questions. Listening to other people’s problems. Being asked for help. Having to negotiate what I wanted with what somebody else wanted from me. And just imagining it made me feel exhausted.

Because sometimes what you need is not another opinion. You don’t need another person explaining your life to you. You don’t need somebody trying to fix the situation, even with the best intentions. You don’t need to hear what they would do in your place. Sometimes you need enough silence to discover what you think. And that can be surprisingly difficult when everybody around you is talking.

I think I have spent a lot of my life being available. Listening, helping, responding, accommodating, explaining, taking other people’s feelings into consideration. And when you are used to doing that, choosing to be alone can almost feel selfish. There is this strange idea that if somebody loves you and wants to be with you, you should want their company. That if somebody offers advice, you should be grateful for it. That if somebody needs you, you should find a little more energy somewhere and give it to them.

But what happens when there is no more energy to find?

Right now, being alone feels like protecting the small amount I have left. At home, nobody is telling me what I should do next. Nobody needs me to agree with them. Nobody is asking me to justify a decision. Nobody needs my help. Nobody is giving me an opinion I then have to process, accept, reject or defend myself against. I can hear my own thoughts before somebody else tells me what they think those thoughts should be.

And maybe that is the part I hadn’t understood before. Sometimes solitude isn’t about getting away from other people. It is about getting back to yourself.

I don’t want to isolate myself forever. I don’t want a life without other people in it. I just recognise that there are moments when I have nothing available for the outside world because everything I have needs to stay here, with me. This is one of those moments.

So today I chose to stay. I chose quiet. I chose my own company. Not because I don’t love the people in my life, but because right now I need a space where nobody is asking me who I should be, what I should do, what I should think or what I can give them.

For a little while, I just need to be with myself.