Light a candle. Brew some coffee. Make a playlist of your favourite songs and play it loud enough to sing without embarrassment. Take off your bra and wrap yourself in your softest blanket. A face mask always helps.
Go to a small café in a big city. Be still. Let the busyness glide past you. Notice things. Like the woman in the red jacket or the couple in the corner. Order a chai latte. Order another one. Write something. Read everything.
Walk around the mall. Try on that top you didn’t think your friends would like. Buy it. Have a conversation with the sales lady. Eavesdrop on the other shoppers.
Take a wrong turn. Step off the path. Get lost for a while. Walk slowly. Take pictures. Drive until you don’t recognize the roads. Don’t check Google Maps. Find your own way back.
Why does “single” have to be a lonely word? Do your own thing. Take your time. Just because you’re alone, doesn’t mean you have to be lonely. Relish in those moments of pure solitude. Let all the pressures of society fall away. Be yourself in the realest sense. Even if you don’t know who that is, pretend until you do. Those in-between moments are when real growth happens.
There isn’t a more absolute freedom than when you’re alone. Eat what you want. Control the thermostat. Watch your favourite movies on repeat. You have no one to answer to besides yourself. Do all the things you told yourself you would but never got around to.
I think there’s too much pressure in life to find that “special someone.” Why is it always the first thing distant relatives want to know about us? Why don’t we weigh our value as individuals first rather than by whether or not someone loves us? Everything is so backwards it doesn’t even make sense anymore. Like my entire life could be falling apart but I’m in a relationship so I’m the success story. Or I could be the happiest I’ve ever been, travelling the world, working at my dream job, but I’m single so I must be sad and lonely.
Loneliness is not a by-product of singleness. Loneliness is the by-product of a fear of being alone. Loneliness is just glorified nostalgia. We think we always have to be somebody’s someone so when we’re not we trap ourselves in reruns of when we were. Stop.
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