Learning How to Be Alone

For someone who finds a lot of joy in solitude, I am terrified of loneliness.

I’ve always enjoyed time alone. As a little girl, I spent hours entertaining myself in my room, and an as adult, I love a day by myself, going for walks and reading in coffee shops. I obviously love to travel alone, exploring new places with just me, myself, and I.

But I would be lying if I said that I never used solitude as a shield to protect myself from loneliness. Loneliness comes, not from physical aloneness, but from rejection, from being ignored.

Sometimes I withdraw not because I want to spend some time in my own company, but because I can't be ignored if I'm alone. When I tuck myself into bed and turn off the light, I'm surrounded by a set of Russian nesting dolls protecting me from rejection. My covers, my apartment, and my building are layers prevented me from being perceived. Solitude, in a strange way, is a temporary band-aid for the pain of loneliness.

I didn’t realize that this is what I was doing until recently, during a particularly reflective few months, when life forced me to consider what it means to be lonely.

As social animals, being alone is always one of our deepest, most primal fears, because, biologically speaking, aloneness means death. No way to protect yourself from threats. No way to reproduce. The very definition of biological unfitness.

But, humans are more than biology, and society has lots of ideas about people, especially women, who end up alone. It says that being alone says something about your value, that being alone means being unchosen. And it feels like we are supposed to think that being chosen by other people is the ultimate achievement in life.

What we forget about this equation is that choosing is a two-way street. Being alone, being single, being in a room filled with people but not speaking to anyone, doesn't mean that we weren't chosen. What it actually means is that we did not choose someone who also chose us. We are also doing the choosing.

Sometimes, of course, that feels like cold comfort. I don’t know about you, but it hurts when I’m not invited to a party—even if I didn’t want to go. The outcome is the same (not going, staying home), but whose choice makes that happen feels very consequential.

There's another reason we fear being alone: we feel that our lives need witnesses. If a tree falls in the forest, whether or not it makes a sound depends on your definition of sound. Is sound the vibrations in the air, the sound waves we learn about in high school physics? Or is sound what happens when those vibrations strike our ears, those tiny delicate bones that tremble against our eardrums?

When we ask this question, the one about trees, we're really asking if something must be perceived by others in order to matter. If I write and no one reads it, did anything I wrote matter? I worry that if my life doesn't have witnesses, a romantic partner, a lifelong circle of friends, attention, it won't mean anything.

But the tricky part about this need for love, affection, attention, is that real connection is not something that you get by working hard for it. A happy relationship isn’t a prize awarded to the woman with the best grades, the best body, the best personality. A friendship isn’t the result of a ten-step study plan.

Sometimes I wish love was merit-based! I like to know where I stand, I like predictable outcomes. I’m not so good at trusting that life will bring me people who will care about me. I’m not so good at not having control. But love is something that can’t be forced, something that happens.

But remember where this essay started? It started out talking about solitude as something peaceful, as something enjoyable. We can’t control who will love us or when. But we can control how much we love ourselves. Loving your own company is the only thing that will truly ease your fear of loneliness. Not because you have to spend all of your time alone—you shouldn’t! But, the truth is that the only person who will always be with you is you. The only relationship that never ends is the one you have with yourself.

That’s a hard thing to swallow, and religious people would disagree with me, would talk about the relationships we have with God, with Jesus, with people who are no longer with us.

But, stay with me for a moment. You would agree that everything on Earth is temporary, that everything here ends. Even the most wonderful, beautiful, special things end, even though we don’t want them to. People grow apart, people move away, people pass away. It doesn't mean those relationships weren't good; if anything, their transience makes them all the more special. We should value people more because we know that our time with them is limited.

But that also means that the only person who will always be there for you, here, is you. Your relationship with yourself will last exactly as long as you’re alive. It’s scary, but it’s also freeing, because it means that you don’t need to wait to meet the right people for your life to begin. It means that you don’t need to wait to be okay.

So, solitude can be a way to hide from rejection, sure, but it can also be a reminder to yourself that you are okay. It’s a reminder that you can be your own witness, that there are many beautiful things out in the world that you can see and experience on you own, that you can make happen. And that you contain so much within you that will keep you company.

I went to hear the New York Philharmonic a few months after a (my first) breakup. The last time I had been there, it had been with him, and although that night with him hadn’t gone well, it was still hard to walk in there by myself, to sit alone in a sea of families and couples.

But, as soon as the music started, this feeling of calm washed over me. I felt so at home. So at peace. I have this feeling whenever I listen to a live orchestra play, this joy and delight at just how beautiful it is. And as I sat there in the audience, I was alone, but I didn’t feel lonely. It wasn’t about being there alone or with a man or with a friend. The experience would have been the same no matter who was there with me. Because I know that this warm feeling I get whenever I hear an orchestra is part of me—so it will be there for me always, until the very end.

This essay is not an endorsement of the hermit lifestyle, and it is not saying that we don't need other people. I don’t want to be lonely. I have wonderful friends, a loving family, that make my life a million times better. I’d also like a family of my own someday.

But I also know that no matter what happens, no matter how much things are out of my control, I won’t have a lonely life, because I have myself. I’m my own witness. My life matters because I’m living it.

Samarkand, Uzbekistan