how loneliness helped me find myself

There was a time when loneliness felt like a trap — a dark pit I couldn’t climb out of. But then I stumbled upon Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Reading her words was like sitting beside someone who’s been through heartbreak and still found a way forward. She wrote honestly about grief, silence, and the messiness of being human. One line stayed with me: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” At first, I thought it meant we need distractions to survive. But slowly, I understood it differently — we tell stories to make sense of ourselves, to heal. In those quiet moments alone, I started piecing together my own story. I stopped running from solitude and began embracing it as a chance to really listen — to my fears, hopes, and truths. Loneliness became less of a prison and more of a mirror, reflecting parts of me I’d never seen before. That kind of quiet isn’t empty. It’s full of hidden voices, waiting to be heard. #Entertainment #Books #LonelyReads #JoanDidion