Being an only child and lying to yourself about being a loser with faraway friends.

"Alone but never lonely" or "alone enough to be accustomed to loneliness"

I've told almost everyone I knew that although I'm always alone, I'm never really lonely. Now, I'll admit, it's not entirely a lie. Times where I'm roaming the Barnes and Nobles isles that I've been through a hundred times, whenever I'm skating with my headphones on full blast, or cleaning my room with a Hermitcraft Season 8 playlist playing on my wall have always made me glad that I'm alone. But, I'd also be lying if I said I was never lonely.

It's a side effect of being an only child, I suppose. Being an only child is people telling you that you're mature for your age, but the reason for that is the only people who were willing to be your "friends" were adults. Being an only child is having people you've just met automatically assume you're arrogant, egotistical, greedy, and self-centered which isn't completely wrong. Being an only child is learning to entertain yourself for hours, and learning that creating friends is easier than making them. Being an only child is learning how to handle your own thoughts and emotions because even before middle school, trusting your parents with them hardly turned out well. Being an only child is knowing that you won't be able to spend your 16th birthday with your parents because it happens to be on a Tuesday, and they have a weekly prayer to attend.

That's not to say it doesn't have any perks. I was adorned with gifts, I had their attention whenever the three of us were at home together, but there was always that nagging feeling that there was something, someone missing. A friend, someone my age who would actually like me. Yeah, I had their attention, but when I didn't, I suppose I was just alone. While they rehearsed for church, I would lay on the floor of the kids room staring at the ceiling. At school I played with bugs and they became my main source of friendship. At church I would be reading or learning to ride some kind of wheel. 

I'd always known how to be alone. I still do. Even to this day, my peace lies in my solitude, but there are some times, some moments where I just long to have a familiar presence near me. I used to have one, I miss her. I'm not saying I don't have friends, because I do. I have a best friend in Romania, a few really close friends scattered across the USA, and a whole group of people down to play games with me, but none of them are here. 

I can never hug any of them. Going to the movies, or any live event, it's always just been me. I can never casually roam a mall with any of them. While in Indonesia, I always try to go as often as I can with my cousins. They always question why I love going so much, and I tell them it's "because the malls in America are never this good quality," which is true, but somewhere buried in a part of my soul I left behind when my parents enrolled me in CPA, I knew that it was because this experience is such a rarity. That the next time I would ever come across it again would be a year minimum when I go back to Indonesia.

That feeling of just being there. Yelling Taylor Swift lyrics in the car even though I'm not a big fan of her, but I learned the lyrics just for them, having a hand to hold while we roam the crowded shopping center, splitting a bowl of ramen while we giggle and judge people that give us snarky looks, getting matching keychains and snacking while we help each other pick out new clothes.

Coming back to my real life after what life is like in Indonesia, it's a harsh reminder of the layers of serenity, loneliness, pride and independence all stacked up in the root of my identity. I'm alone. I always have been, and I know that even if I remain lonely for the rest of my life, I'll survive, and I'll make it work. After all, I've been alone enough.