I ride the subway at 3am by myself. No one else is ever in my car and there are no sounds but the grumble of the tracks. I thought those moments were what it meant to be truly alone.
To be quite frank, I used to think a lot of things about being alone. I thought I had mastered the art of being alone and I was naive enough to believe that I had mastered everything. However, with age comes the realization that maybe my ego was larger than my being. It’s funny to think that I was confident in my skill of being by myself. But why would I want to be alone? College is the last time friends remain at your fingertips before employment kicks in and we all go our separate ways. So why would I waste that time to be with myself?
Winter break made me realize that I, in fact, was terrible at being alone because I felt … lonely.
During the semester, my hectic college schedule kept me stressed. Instead of dealing with my stress, I kept a revolving door of people beckoning during every hour of the day. No meal was eaten alone, every study session was accompanied; I even walked to my club meetings with people. My cell phone constantly hammered the thoughts of others in my head through a everpresent stream of social media and text messages. There was not a moment of my day when my thoughts were purely my own.
This coping mechanism worked — but worked too well that when it was yanked from me during winter break isolation, I felt purely and utterly alone in all the worst ways.
What I have realized is that being alone and feeling lonely are two completely separate beasts. Being alone is what I thought I had taken by the reins and protected myself against. But being able to remain by myself for an hour shows an aptitude at entertaining myself more than anything else. Anyways, I wasn’t particularly good at being by myself either. Loneliness, on the other hand, is manifested by an inability to be alone. At that point, all you are left with is yourself, and when that is someone you can’t face … you feel lonely.
I think I felt the most lonely, however, when I was in crowded rooms. I usually like being around people — I really do — but there was something about the expectation of a crowded room to be engaged with others that felt rancid and sickled sweet.
I equated loneliness with being alone, so I completely cut both out of my life through constantly engaging myself with others. Was that successful? I never felt lonely, so in some regard, yes. However, I felt like I was never able to breathe. Last semester, I kept a constant stream of people in order to not deal with my personal issue of being alone. But I can’t afford to do that anymore.
It was only when I was completely alone that I realized that there is a power the ability to carve out personal spaces. And while there might be silence and a lack of words said aloud, solitude creates the most beautiful conversations in thoughts.
But most people are uncomfortable with the idea of being alone. I am still somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of being alone. Taking trips by oneself is fetishized as something so foreign it can only belong in inspirational films.
I can’t turn my life into Eat, Pray, Love as Julia Roberts had, but I can learn to be comfortable spending time with just myself and my own thoughts. Traditionally, I reserve my private thought time into writing one of my articles, but even now I struggle to dig deep enough to actually write how I’m feeling.
I have yet to figure out the trick to stop loneliness, but I came into this semester with the mindset to cut out the toxic habits I had developed last semester to avoid being alone. Now, sometimes I eat my meals by myself, some nights I now sit in my room alone, and sometimes I get lonely. However, in forcing myself to be a little uncomfortable and experience feeling a little bit of loneliness, I’ve been getting better at being alone.
I generally don’t want to be alone, but I want to be okay with being by myself when I must. Although, I have spent months fearing my exact prospect. Yet perhaps tomorrow it won’t be so scary anymore.