How do you respond to being alone?

Taking the question first from a purely physical level, I have lived most of my life alone, even when living with others.  As a child, the separation I felt from the rest of the world bugged the daylights out of me, and my attempts to fit into the "clique" only drove that wall higher.  As I reached puberty, I began to reverse the process, though, and decided that I liked being alone, and even though I've been married twice, had two kids, and interacted (mostly sporadically) with parents and my brother, the times that I am alone seem to be my most productive and happy, and therefore cherished, for what I am able to accomplish.  If no one else is interested n what I am accomplishing, well, perhaps it bites a bit, but for the most part, I can be satisfied that I accomplished it.  I am, without a doubt, a very reclusive individual.

Looking at this from the spiritual side of life, as a young child, I never felt alone, because my invisible "playmates" were always hanging around.  It was only as I entered school, and began to fear expressing about my "mates", that they seemed to recede into the background of my life.  Since my re-awakening around age 32, though, the sense of being along spiritually has rarely arisen.  Those times that it did, it was more likely because I had been the one putting up the wall, even unconsciously.  The awakening experienced though, has engendered a different reason for consciously choosing aloneness - I find that I am so open most of the time, that especially in a crowd of people, the thoughts and emotions of those around are almost overwhelming, so I do tend to choose very carefully with what groups I interact or people I engage with in longer term relationships.  So I don't have a lot of really close friends - most that I do have, are well-controlled mentally and emotionally most of the time.  The funny thing is, for the most part, I don't consciously choose who my friends are (unless, of course, they become abusive to me or others).  When the resonance happens, it's great.