Transcription
If you genuinely enjoy being alone, do you ever wonder if it is an inherent part of your character, or if it stems from feeling inescapably lonely in the first place? Until you taught yourself to enjoy the peace and happiness one can find in solitude, what if the reason you now prefer and choose solitude at every turn is that you were a very lonely child or teenager—not by your own choice? That’s how you learned to thrive and grow, so you no longer know if you can do that around people.
There might also be an element of personal pride and an unconscious "You can't fire me; I quit" point when your brain switches your feelings about solitude from distress to relief. But then I wonder how to differentiate an ingrained love of solitude from an acquired ability to thrive off unchosen loneliness—to learn from it and be nourished by it. To what extent might it be a form of contentment built on a bedrock of resignation?