There’s a strange kind of optimism in the way people talk about solitude.
You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it.
„Abia aștept să fiu singur.”
“I can’t wait to be alone.”

They say it as if loneliness were a scented candle and not a dismantling.
But true loneliness — the kind that reconfigures your nervous system — doesn’t begin when you shut the door.
It begins when you are the only one left in the room.

Because real solitude is a relationship.
One-on-one.
You and… you.
It’s an unmediated encounter with the self, without footnotes, playlists, or page-turners to soften the impact.
Reading isn’t solitude.
Watching a film isn’t solitude.
Even painkillers dressed up as music or powder aren’t solitude.
Those are escapes, neatly packaged.

Loneliness — the real kind — is mimetic.
It looks back at you with your own face.
It reflects your honesty if you’re honest.
Your depth, if you have any.
Your terror, if you’ve hidden it long enough.

In that sense, solitude is a diagnostic.
If it feels oppressive, maybe you are.
If it’s peaceful, maybe you’ve made peace.
If it destroys you — it didn’t start the war. It just handed you the mirror.

And maybe that’s why Giovanni Papini, the great iconoclast of spiritual literature, once confessed that loneliness had finished him off.

As for me?
I’ve lived most of my life thinking I knew what solitude was.
Turns out I was just distracted.

Until now.
Now, there’s only me.
And he doesn’t say much.

— AJ