Up: [[Fear]] Created: 2022-11-03 Updated: 2025-07-04 > [!Orbit] Maggie Nelson in *Bluets* > Loneliness is solitude with a problem. (p. 28) The difference between loneliness and solitude is choice. In solitude, you’ve chosen to be alone. With loneliness, either a specific someone or collective society has made you feel alone. Loneliness is about *feeling* alone, not necessarily *being* alone. You can be lonely in a crowd, in a marriage, in a family. Loneliness is part of the human condition, happens to everyone at different times, and is only dangerous if it goes on too long. I’ve only had one episode of what I call existential loneliness in my life. I was eighteen years old, sitting at a campfire with my cousin Tommy and his wife, Sandie. We were in a trailer park, everyone around us, including my family, asleep in their beds. Mid-conversation, I was overtaken with such a strong sense of being alone in the universe that I couldn’t stay sitting and chatting with people I loved. I jumped up and went off into the darkness on my own. While Tommy came and found me, understood and talked with me about the feeling, *choosing* to be alone was how I overcame loneliness.