I think I am same as you. I recently noticed that listening to birds singing make me feel incredibly melancholic. I was very lonely for a few years. I was listening to the singing a lot when I was at my place, and now I have associated birds singing and loneliness. It is unfortunate that something so calming and beautiful now makes me feel sad. It has become the sound of loneliness to me.

I agree that it might be due to where we grow up ... I grew up in a forest on an island with few people living within walking distance. But I've been living in a small city for about 14 years, and more and more I long to go back to living somewhere were there aren't all these people around. Or more importantly, to somewhere so much more _quiet_.

Disagree, I enjoy hanging out in nature, and when it’s not possible I usually look at images on nature subreddits like r/earthporn. Always manages to calm me.

Sure. But consider that not everyone is like you. There has been a normalization of nature lovers in our time (mostly correlated with upbringing and environment, but in some cases possibly partly correlated with affluence ironically — most of my nature loving friends like spending money at REI and posting nature photos — if that was my hobby I would too — yet I notice that there’s a kind of mimesis going on where it’s now cool to love nature) and it’s an interesting reversal because in my day the opposite was true in my milieu (in a big city, so self selected population).

I come from survivalist stock where my parents escaped smaller more rural places to make it in the city hence the opposite orientation.

These two aren't mutually exclusive tbh, both being in rural areas and cities has its pluses and minuses. Living in some area that's on the edge of a city that lets you have both seems like a good compromise to that. Nature a short walk one way, practicality and connectivity a short walk the other way.

I grew up in a small rural area and experience this in the opposite direction. Sometimes I just need to get away from people, there's too many of them and crowds can be nerve wracking, not to mention noisy.

There is nowhere on earth I am happier than at a family member's camp, deep in the woods away from everyone all by myself. Ultimately I think your last point is absolutely correct. I doubt I'd feel this way if this wasn't a lived experience while growing up.

Yes. I used to live in a smaller city and my friends were from even smaller places (small towns, farms). They have a relationship with space, openness and people that I don’t have. This is particularly pronounced here in the US where there’s vast expanses and people love their backyards. I never had backyard growing up and never missed it.

When I told them about my dream home being a 500 sq ft apartment in the middle of a bustling metropolis, they said the first thought they had was “claustrophobia”.

But for me, small spaces in dense areas give me joy — living in the midst of an exciting morass of people where people collide in Brownian motion and new ideas form feel like happiness. This notion is much more common in denser places like Europe and Asia.

Being alone in the city, "alone in the crowd", feels just as lonely if not more so for me than walking alone in the forest. The latter I expect to be alone, but in the former, I'm surrounded by people but with no connection. It's a strange feeling.

There’s a new lot coined word “sonder” that describes being alone in the city and observing others and wondering about their inner lives. As a writer this fills me with warmth rather than loneliness.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sonder#:~:text=(file)-,Verb...)

There's a difference between "being alone" and "loneliness". Being alone in the city or the forest can be great. Being lonely, less so.