The real reason you want to be away from people isn't just because you like being alone, but because: You're tired of people uncharitably misinterpreting you, using everything you say as an opportunity to make it about them by projecting their unresolved psychological issues onto you, forcing you to deal with their hang ups by handling them, or exercising discipline to ignore them. You're tired of low functioning, easily triggered, selfish and emotionally volatile people not being able to restrain themselves and self-contain their emotional states, lashing out at you for things you didn't even mean they thought you meant, just because it made them feel bad without ever being directed at them. You're tired of being a symbolically abstracted dehumanised punchbag for other people's unresolved traumas, and not even having that apologised for or acknowledged. You're tired of people always seeing the worst in you as you tirelessly try your best, and using your attempts both masterful and messy as an opportunity to self-aggrandise and put you down. You're tired of being criticised by people who do not care enough for you to even want to help you. You're tired of people using your well-meant gestures and sincere thoughts as opportunities for undermining you, manipulatively reframing your words so they can self-soothe themselves by humiliating you. You're tired of takers taking from you, when you give so freely, and even then they twist the knife. It's not that you don't want to give, it's that you want to give on your own terms to people who will genuinely appreciate it, rather than to insatiable parasites for whom nothing is ever enough.