Independence vs Lonliness

How would you define the difference between independence and being alone?  I experience both on a daily basis.  I love doing things on my own - I go shopping alone, treat myself to dinner, go see a movie by myself, curl up at home with a book, even go to Disneyland all alone!  I like my independence.  I like to give myself a break from people. 

But I also get lonely.  Day after day of doing things alone gets a little mundane and I wish I had someone around to join me in my adventures.  At night I get very lonely when all my roommates are out and I'm the only one without plans.  I might take myself out to dinner if I can afford it - but when you eat out alone you don't have anyone to talk to and it's kind of a short dinner.  You're back home within the hour.  And still no one else is home.  What do you do?  I get too scared to go to sleep when no one else is home - what if someone breaks in and no one else is there to team up with me against an attacker?  I've already eaten so I can't go back out for ice cream or anything.  I can't focus on studying, and no one is online to facebook chat with.

My other question - how do I find people to help me get out of my lonely funk?  People already establish me as an independent person, so they don't usually invite me to go out.  Either that, or my roommates are all out on dates and I'm... not.  Guys just don't ask me on dates.  It's probably due to my independent nature and they see me as a loner who would be a downer of a date.  How do I overcome that?  I'm really not a loner.  I would love to go out every weekend if I had the opportunity.

I think it all stemmed from my 5th grade year of elementary school.  I had just moved from a place where I was very well-known... friends with almost the entire student body.  I always had someone to play with because everyone knew me and I knew all of them.  I don't mean to brag, but I was quite a popular child.  Then I moved to a place where relationships were all established, and it didn't seem that they accepted new-comers very well.  I sort of made a couple friendships... but they weren't very strong and disintegrated within a couple months.  When middle school came I thought things would be easier because it was a coming together of all of the elementary schools in the valley... it didn''t help much.  I was still stuck in the same mess - no one knew me and I had nowhere to turn.  From then on I became very independent and didn't care much if I had lunch alone or would just go straight home after school.  It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I would really hang out with people outside of classes.  By that time, it was too late.  I still haven't been able to change my approach to meeting new people.  I'm still shy and give off an impression of "I don't want to talk to you" when it's really "I don't know HOW to talk to you".

People peg me as a loner because I'm independent.  They see me doing things alone and just assume that that's the way I like to be all the time.  It's not.  I am a people person - I love to be around people, but I am also shy.  I don't always feel comfortable meeting new people when I don't know what to talk about, so they might think I'm stuck up or think I don't want to waste my time or something like that.  Not true.  I just don't have great communication skills. 

I guess I really do know the answers of how to get away from this image - I need to be a leader and invite others to do things.  I shouldn't wait to be invited all the time.  I need to expose to the world my outgoing personality.

Life is good - but life can and should be GREAT!