alone vs lonely

What is worse? Being alone or being lonely?

It’s late at night, or early in the morning. The clocks were set back an hour, and I woke up in the middle of the night. I did the worst possible thing: I took my phone and read a message.
A friend said they were alone, trying to find sleep. And I get it. But it put my mind into overdrive.

Being alone can feel frightening. The silence, the stillness, the way the dark stretches out, the way every sound in the house suddenly feels amplified. A creak in the floorboards, the hum of the fridge, your own heartbeat in your ears. It can feel overwhelming. I understand that fear.
But then I also think, being able to be alone, truly alone, isn’t that a skill? To sit with yourself and not need someone else to constantly soothe you. To hold your own hand, in a way. It is not easy, but it is powerful. Being alone teaches you to take responsibility for yourself. If something goes wrong, there is no one to blame. If something goes right, there is no one to hide behind. Alone forces you to see your self, and sometimes that is the hardest thing of all. Maybe that is why people run from it. Being alone means looking at your own reflection and learning to rely on yourself. And that takes strength.

Still, I have to admit: I do not actually know what it feels like to be completely alone. Not really. There is always someone around, in the next room, a family member shuffling in the kitchen, a neighbour’s car pulling into the driveway. There is always my phone, messages waiting, people I could reach if I really wanted to. Alone, for me, is almost theoretical. Maybe that is why I do not fear it the way others do. Maybe I do not have the right to say anything about it at all.

Loneliness, though. Loneliness I know.
That is something I recognise. Too well.

Because loneliness does not care how many people are in the room. I have felt it at crowded tables, where laughter is bouncing back and forth like a ball, and I cannot seem to catch it. I have felt it scrolling through my phone, staring at names in my contact list, paralysed by the thought that if I wrote to someone, I would be a burden. I have felt it in conversations with people I love, when the words land flat between us and I realise they do not really see me, not the way I need them to.

Loneliness is a different kind of silence. Not the silence of an empty house, but the silence of not being heard. It makes you feel invisible. It makes you feel like an outsider in your own skin. And you cannot just “fix” it by pulling people closer. You could lie next to someone, share a bed, and still feel lonely. Because what you crave is not presence, it is connection. You do not want bodies in the room, you want souls reaching out.

And here is the cruel thing: loneliness does not just sting in the moment, it lingers. It burrows in. It makes a home under your ribs and waits. That is why I sometimes call it a silent killer. Not dramatic, not loud, but slowly eating away at your sense of worth, your sense of belonging.

So when people say they hate being alone, I always want to ask: do you mean alone? Or do you mean lonely? Because the two are not the same. Not even close. Alone is external. It is a state. You can change it, you can pick up the phone, you can walk outside, you can step into the world. Lonely is internal. It lingers. It drags. It convinces you that you are unworthy of reaching out, unworthy of being seen.

Maybe I am just being picky with words, a stickler for semantics. Maybe I am wrong altogether. But words matter, do they not? Using the wrong one makes all the difference. (Who made me the expert? No one did, I know.)

And yes, maybe this whole train of thought is strange. Maybe it even sounds tone-deaf. Maybe you are sitting there wondering who or what rattled my cage to make me write something like this. Maybe I have no clue about anything and I am just rambling into the void. But thoughts circle in my head until I let them out, and this is one of those thoughts. If I don’t let it out I won’t ever fall asleep again.

I am rarely alone, but I often feel lonely.