It's been said that "solitude is the joy of being alone......and loneliness is the pain of being alone"....or something close to that.
"loneliness is a word to express the pain of being alone...solitude is a word to express the glory of being alone."~~paul tillich, an existentialist theologian, and a bit of a loner lolol.
i catagorize those i know on a continuum but segmentally definable as best friend, close friend, good friend, friend, aquaintance and stranger. a stranger being just a friend i've yet to meet. oh yeah, a final catagory, of course, would be those i don't care to know; they are not my friends though they once might have been.
i only have one best friend at a time. throughout my life i've had four best friends including two growing up. as a full-grown adult, i've had one sexual best friend and one platonic best friend, both of whom i've sadly buried. i currently am without a best friend and i find that aspect of my life to be lonely, even though i still have many close & good friends.
close & good friends morph one to another, generally depending on circumstance. friends can become good friends given time & compatibility but friends can also morph back into aquaintances. i've recently learned that three of my good friends from around the country will be converging on my house this winter for a reunion. i love & highly value my friends and i've worked to maintain my relationships with them. i still enjoy friendships with many from as far back as the sandbox.
recently i lost two close friends, a cousin of mine who was my friend since childhood, my good friend since our teens and my close friend since our mid20s, and another (not a cousin) who was my friend since about 1984. they both started to abandon me during my ordeal with alzheimer's & finished me off right after my mom died. i could not be more hurt.
people change, relationships change, i learn to live with that. my cousin had taken to new ageism which allowed her to either adopt as new or which enhanced inherently nasty characteristics (she actually said to my face though not in these words that my mother's alzheimer's was her own damned fault--my mother who took this cousin in as a daughter), while my college friend never maintained any relationships in her life outside of her sizeable family. i was seriously her only friend. for years i fought her fighting me off and finally, after over 20 years of friendship, she pushed too hard when i was too weak from losing my mom to counter her neuroses. those two left me with an oddly conflicted resolve: farewell my friends, may you rot in hell.
only three other people who i loved have dumped me. a lover in college found me too depressing when i was young and out to save the world. he told me he thought i was doing a great job, only go do it around someone else. i do not now consider that he was ever a true friend, just a two-year mistake.
then my phoney step-grandmother pushed me out of her life after my grandfather died. we learned that she had changed his will while he suffered alzheimer's, stealing from us his legacy. the last thing she said to me was "the only reason you love me is because i used to sneak dollar bills into your hand when you were a child." that was the last thing i ever let her say to me.
another good friend dumped me upon getting married, telling me that she knew she was in the wrong but that she was no longer capable of being my good friend.
so i've been burned five times in 50 years. you'd think i'd learn. but what i've learned instead is that you take your chances when you make friends with someone. you open yourself up and you leave yourself vulnerable. i've suffered some pain, but even that adds depth to life and i am buoyed still by my own strength and by the many successful relationships which i continue to enjoy.
i can swim on my own, not a problem. but, playful by nature, i find it more fun to swim with a buddy and i find this to be a bit of a problem with early retirement. there are not enough people to play with who know how to swim in the deep end.
i enjoy swimming laps too; i very much value my solitude. but i don't think i would like much living in a world where if i lost my best friend, i'd have no good and close friends to swim with me. it becomes harder to make friends the more you grow out of the sandbox and the farther you swim from shore.
so go make friends. the worst that can happen is they'll rip your heart out.