The photo shows the middle of a basic suburban street. The day is sunny, creating an overwhelming joyous atmosphere. There is a girl wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Her head is tiled back in laughter, leaning back to a boy dressed in similar attire, who is picking her up. This boy is smiling with a twinkle to his eyes of pure, carefree happiness.

This is one of the last days this girl will have before the sunny days turned to worrisome rainy nights. These two characters are my boyfriend and I enjoying one of our usual outings while I was living in my old home. We would peruse through the streets on our way to McDonalds or Publix since they were the only things walking distance from home. We were on our way back from our mini adventure and he had climbed a hill that was on the way. He told me to climb but I refused, wanting to go up the stairs instead. My boyfriend’s face displayed a playful look and I immediately knew his plan. I ran away in laughter as he chased after me. Once he caught me he swung me around while we both giggled. This was the perfect moment where we both for possibly the last time were completely carefree and happy. Before I learned I had to move, and since then days were filled with stress.
My whole life I have been the subject to an endless cycle of changing and adapting. I had moved to four places my whole life. While there are positive aspects of moving in learning a new culture and having fresh new opportunities, there are also negative ones. Loneliness is a huge factor in moving. You start fresh start new, and start alone. Completely alone.

Loneliness was never an unfamiliar concept to me. The constant moving, changing, and rearranging barely gave me time to think about myself and my happiness. I made friends here and there but I've never felt truly accompanied by someone. A year or two go by and they'd vanish and I’d find another friend. It wasn't until I got to settle down in what I now call my home for six years is when I realized I could finally make friends that mattered. And I did. But due to my patterns one, two years go by and then they'd vanish. And I'd start over with a new friend. So even though I was accompanied I never left the feeling of being lonely.

It wasn't until I couldn’t find a new friend. Luck was not on my side and for the first time I was truly alone. No company. No two year friend. No one. I became depressed, crying almost every day because of the drowning thoughts that I had no one. It wasn’t until later I realized how dependent I was on others for my happiness. I am not the only one who does this. Humans are social creatures. It's how we thrive, how we survive. So it's natural to feel happiness around people you like. Then something interesting happens and our happiness gets entangled with people. If one feels lonely one typically feels sad. It wasn't until I had to learn to feel lonely and be okay with it that I found out the first stepping stone towards becoming your own true person.

Being alone does not have to be a bad thing. No matter what type of connotation it has. Learning to be happy while being alone is incredibly important. I struggle with this a lot. I struggle with this feeling of loneliness every day. Many might not struggle with loneliness everyday but we have all experience the sense of being completely alone. The thought might scare you. It might make you sad, it might make you anxious but I’m here to say that being lonely is not a bad thing or a scary thing. Being lonely will not kill you and it is not permanent thing.

Now I am bidding adieu to my self-proclaimed home to once again start the cycle of rearranging and adjusting. Once again I have been confronted with loneliness face on and in the most intense way. Once again I will prevail and I won’t let loneliness engulf me this time. I’ll learn to make peace with my situation and battle loneliness one more time.