The loneliness was in everything; it was there when he was inside me, telling me that there was no one else like me. It was there in the way he looked at me during stolen moments inside my apartment, sometime between late night and early morning.

I travel alone because it’s less about the travel and more about myself. When I am traveling alone, I can’t ignore my hopes and fears. I know who I am, yes, but traveling solo is like a crash course into the person I hide from the world.

The loneliness - the bone-deep loneliness you feel when you are very far from everything and everyone you have ever known - didn’t come until I was somewhere over the sea between Africa and Europe

This is not an attempt to fix my loneliness. There is nothing to fix. Our loneliness, despite what Britney told us, is not killing us. Perhaps what is killing us (if you’ll excuse such dramatic language) is the shame in which we wrap our loneliness.