I’m lying in bed and there are a few hours between myself, sleep and a morning flight to Vancouver. I’ll then have 7 air bound hours of complete freedom before I will meet a few thousand people. I’ve been training for this like a marathon – by soaking up seclusion in my apartment.

I remedy frequent travel with extreme introversion. Not so much a kind of shyness but a profound desire for loneliness – everyday social interactions often leave me weighty, and I’m not too sure where that comes from but I know that I’ve been this way since I was a girl. A longing to be alone. I indulge in these feelings best when running outside, cleaning my house, listening to records, cooking – these simple rituals that feed me. I love people but if they are anything as complicated as I am, then they take work. It takes work to engage, and some days I’d rather remain unattached. As David Bazan says, “it’s hard to find a friend” and I think it’s hard to find someone to wade through the thick, well-mannered sludge of small talk with, until you get to the good stuff. We’re all cut from the same cloth – it just takes a little while for us to see each other. And the hardest damn thing is to be aware of that. No one wants to look at fear or anxiety or rejection. They want the hum of the microwave, anything else.

I didn’t have any plans for this post other than to share my perspective from a decidedly semi-solo life in the city. My job and my age allow for this habit not to get too unhealthy, I regularly engage, and find deep joy in doing so. But oh, the days I revel in absolute loneliness – those are the times I feel most at peace.

I often wonder about those little rectangular spaces, the ones that house all of those people in the city; are they filled with lonesome people too? Is everyone so “caught up” or busy? Is restlessness the symptom or the culprit? Are there pockets of quiet that exist in the in-between?

I wonder if people are too afraid to be alone.. Even just for a moment. Just enough time to put their phone down without the phantom vibration they might feel through their jeans. Or if they walk down the street and look strangers square in their faces, notice the way the trees are filling out, smelling of life. I bet it’d do us all some good to find those pockets of stillness, get back to ourselves. Find a corner where music, thoughts and voices are put to rest. I wonder what else we’d hear?

As I listen for the premature alarm clock in my half-conscious state, I stretch out my back and listen to nothing but the quiet, and think that I might finally understand Paul Simon’s “Peace Like A River”.

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Check out more from Nada on her blog: www.friendswithbotharms.com