I enjoy my own company. It is only when I am alone that I know who I truly am.

I can be sociable and outgoing but I require a great deal of time by myself in order to recharge, says Louise O’Neill.

For my birthday this year, I decided to treat myself to a night’s stay in the Europe Hotel in Killarney.

It was, as can be expected, spectacularly indulgent; so much so that I was googling the legality of squatting rights when it was time to check out.

However, when I told people about my birthday plans, the first question they asked wasn’t ‘God, you really fancy yourself, don’t you?’ but rather ‘Who are you going with?’ followed swiftly by ‘You can’t go by yourself, surely?’

They couldn’t understand that the decision to go alone was my treat to myself.

The gift of solitude was the thing I desired most, I told them, and this sojourn was yet another stepping stone to my inevitable metamorphosis into Howard Hughes.

I am what the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain, terms an ‘extroverted introvert’.

I can be sociable and outgoing but I require a great deal of time by myself in order to recharge.

Luckily, as a writer, I can spend most of my day alone, using the excuse that I find it difficult to produce work of any substance if I’m able to hear another human being within a 20-mile radius.

Not for me, cute tales of scribbling the entire first draft of an international bestseller on napkins in a crowded coffee shop or bringing my laptop on train/plane/automobile journeys because that’s ‘where I do my best work’.

It was when I was living in New York that I had the idea for Only Ever Yours, and yet I felt unable to write it.

I was too distracted by the drama of warring factions in the fashion closet, the man at my retail job who appeared to resent my mere existence and wasn’t shy about letting me know, or the clamouring crowds jammed up against me during my morning subway ride.

I was drowning in other people — their voices, their bodies, their fear, their joy, their dreams — and I couldn’t remember my own.

It was only when I returned home to Clonakilty that I felt as if I had room to breathe, to think, to allow the words to flow onto the page.

I needed that silence, physically and emotionally, in order to be creative.

It shouldn’t surprise me, really.

I was a solitary child, suspecting that the time spent reading, making up stories, or acting out fantasy scenarios in my head was far more enjoyable than playing with my classmates.

I remember watching Interview With The Vampire when I was nine and not understanding the fuss when Brad Pitt’s character was trapped in a coffin, doomed to live out his eternal life in seclusion.

I could do that, I thought to myself. I could do that easily.

As an adult, I still enjoy my own company. Sometimes I feel that it is only when I am alone that I know who I truly am.

However, it was during a recent discussion with my friend Niamh about my favourite pastimes (reading, writing, walking, yoga, meditation) and she commented on how solitary my life sounded, that I began to wonder where the dividing line between being alone and loneliness lies, and if I had the capacity to recognise it.

There have been periods of my life where I have deliberately isolated myself.

These periods were usually preceded by emotional trauma of some sort: The death of a family member, a relationship breaking up, a close friendship disintegrating.

In the ensuing grief, I would admonish myself for allowing someone close enough to hurt me.

Keeping people at a distance was preferable, indeed safer; vulnerability was simply an invitation for pain.

If I remained alone, then I could protect myself from those twin evils — rejection and abandonment.

There were other aspects of relationships that I found difficult.

I had expended a great deal of energy into constructing a very specific identity for myself — I wanted people to perceive me as easy-going and nice and kind, self-sufficient and independent, someone with no needs or demands of her own.

This was an easy artifice to maintain in short periods of time but I couldn’t pretend to be perfect all of the time.

If I fell in love or let a friend see the ‘real’ me, they would know I was impatient, prone to irritability, fiercely competitive, obsessed with being right and winning every argument every time.

(I know, I know. I’m a monster and I’m going to die alone.)

Relationships acted as a mirror, showing me the aspects of myself that I secretly despised.

It’s only been in recent years that I have come to realise that we need those mirrors.

We are social creatures, and it is only through knowing others — whether they be child or parent or lover or friend — that we can even attempt to know ourselves, or come to terms with our strengths and our failings.

Refusing to allow others to love us does not keep us safe, it keeps us small.

Small risks leads to small lives.

I have taken risks.

I have declared my love for people who were not able to meet me but I have felt the exhilarating joy of being honest about my needs.

I have let go of friendships that no longer felt supportive and have met others who have loved me unconditionally, flaws and all.

I have cried in front of my parents and my sister instead of pretending to be invincible. I have felt alive.

I doubt I will ever overcome my natural propensity towards introversion, nor do I want to.

I believe, as Warsan Shire wrote, that “My alone feels so good. I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude.”

But I am lucky to have found my tribe.

I have people in my life who are sweeter than my solitude, and who still respect my need for it.

What more could I ask for?