5 Reasons why feeling lonely can make you a better person

Whether you have lived abroad for a while, just moved or have grown apart from friends at home, there will be times where you feel you have no one to spend time with, no offers of things to do and that sitting at home is your only option. It can be scary and isolating to feel you have no friends but also a position not many people ever have to be in if they have stayed at home all their lives.

The first time I felt truly lonely was when I moved to France, aged 20, to work as a language assistant in a school in rural Normandy and had a tiny room inside the gates of the school. The village was tiny; there was a post office (soon to become my best friend), a supermarket and a bakery and not much else! I remember phoning my mum and dad in October (having been there for 6 weeks), crying down the phone that I was so lonely and wanted to come home. After work, the place was empty and I had literally no one to talk to. This was before the days of mobile phones and internet (showing my age) and I really missed my family and friends. Plus, I was not confident in French at all and was too scared to even speak to people!

My dream was to live in France and move there forever, and I felt like I was letting everyone down, as well as giving up on my dream. I stuck it out the year and forced myself to go to any classes the village offered; so did yoga classes (I hate yoga) just to learn all the vocabulary for moving your body parts, and went to an art class for primary kids so painted with the 10 year-olds to learn art vocabulary. I spent all my time painting the contents of my cider, cheese and baguette food shops, watching French TV to learn faster, listening to French CDs reading all the lyrics, and wrote letters all week to my friends and family.

I made friends with some teachers who invited me to dinner and spent every weekend traveling 2.5hrs by train each way to see my best friend who had the luck of being placed in a city! I looked forward to that time all week and we spent the weekends traveling around France, visiting Paris, clubbing on random boats, listening to Westlife albums, meeting so many people from all over the world and navigating life in France together. Thank God for her and for the hours I would spend on the phone to her – she really did save my first year abroad and helped me keep faith in my love of France.

The main thing I learned about myself however, was my love of being alone. I learned that I need time to think and to be alone, but also like the option to see people when I want to (that is the part I had to work on). Like many introverts, we need our own space but for most of our life other people had been around and it can become suffocating when it is not a choice. Similarly, for extraverts, having no one around can be stressful.

Here are 5 reasons why being lonely can make you a better person:

1. You learn to be by yourself – being alone is a skill that not everyone has – it helps you become independent and able to cope on your own
2. You learn what kind of person you are – you become aware of whether you need to be around others or prefer time alone
3. It pushes you out of your comfort zone – if you want to change being lonely, you have to make effort to join groups, speak to others and do activities you would otherwise, not have done
4. You become more open-minded – you say yes to offers of nights out, trips, activities and hobbies that you would have your mind closed to, had you not been looking to broaden your horizons
5. You meet people from all walks of life – from people who are traveling, to others who have made their lives there, to natives, you will meet people from everywhere and will become clear about the types of people you like spending time with

All in all, as much as loneliness is not ideal, it is temporary and can be changed by simply meeting one person who becomes a friend, or teaches you that you actually like being alone! For me, now I know who I want to be around and do not need friends for the sake of having friends. I love my own company but I have done some very random hobbies and experiences to get to this stage, as well as meeting a lot of random people! But those nights of my mum and dad telling me to get on the plane and come home, that October, are all now a distant memory as I have never really moved back home permanently since that time and I learned so much from that year of being lonely.