I hoped yourself but knew myself. I used to prefer solitude much for the same reasons you describe and other people eventually convinced me it must have meant there was something wrong with me. I could never understand, when I was in the youth center after grade school, why there'd be a system where if you misbehaved you'd have be put away from the other kids to be by yourself. "You mean I'm not already being punished by being forced to be around the other kids the rest of the time?" It wasn't that I thought I was better to be around than they were in general, but how could someone else possibly come up with just what I wanted to have inside my head without knowing me as well as I did?