The Art of Being Alone

Learning to be

alone is an art form.

I’m an extreme introvert and spend most of my time alone. It’s not that bad.

I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. Here’s a delving deep into Ashley’s trauma, but I had a terrible experience in elementary school, where I had this girl who decided I was only to be her best friend and I can have no one else. She used to hit me whenever I contradicted her, she chased away anyone I had tried to make friends with. And so I gave up with social interaction and became a quiet person by circumstance.

Well, I guess you could say that it was circumstance. I was born into a family of quiet and somewhat awkward people. My mother always tells me that she’s shy and hates interacting with people, despite her striking up conversations awkwardly with strangers in checkout lines. I generally don’t believe her when she says things like this; the shy people I knew would never strike up a conversation with strangers.

I consider myself to be an introverted extrovert. I can be extroverted when I want to, my social battery burns out extremely quickly. When I was dating someone, after one hour of spending time with them I was completely done. Maybe that says a bit about our compatibility, but even when I’m out with friends too long, my thoughts just tend to wander towards wanting to go home. I’m a homebody, too, because during the pandemic I thrived and became the person I always wanted to be—but at home.

In New York City, I loved the fact I could do everything alone. I went to the movies, to concerts, ate alone. I spent the majority of my time in New York by myself and I absolutely loved it. The only time I got to be lonely was when I was sick and alone in my Brooklyn apartment with someone who claimed to be my friend and wasn’t acting like one. That was the loneliest experience I may have ever had, to crawl up in my bed, sick and alone, ready to keel over or end it all.

As a society we tend to look down on aloneness, but here are some ways to make it bearable.

Look around. Almost everyone is alone.

Go to the grocery store and look around. How many people are by themselves? Then head to the library—it’s not normal to come to the library with another person. I think a lot of the stigma that comes with being alone comes from our culture, as we shame people who are alone. We think, “Oh, how sad that person is seeing a movie by themselves” because as a culture, we set up the concept of going to the movies as something we only go on a date or with family. It’s perfectly okay to see a movie alone, because why can we go grocery shopping or to the library alone? By that logic, people who are alone are incapable of doing anything. And we know that’s deeply flawed logic.

But, maybe, it’s your insecurities that are propelling your fear of being alone. You think you are not enough, so you constantly seek out a life partner to validate your existence. Maybe because you don’t like the way you look, so you think everyone around you is judging the way you look.

You have to think, that’s a really shitty person if they’re going around judging people the way you think they are. How many times have you judged a person just randomly living their life? Not much, right?

Go abroad alone.

It took going abroad to South Korea by myself for me to actually become comfortable with myself. I didn’t speak any Korean, didn’t have any friends on the program I was going on yet, and had never actually done anything by myself before. I was seventeen-eighteen years old and essentially was a baby still.

I had a two-hour commute everyday, and as I did it alone, I was extremely anxious, but eventually it became a second nature to me. Korea was where I realized it was okay to be alone, as people went to cafes by themselves, commuted by themselves, and would bike by themselves along the Han Gang. For a kid who grew up in Baltimore County, all of this was unheard of, and I drank it all in.

I started going to new areas by myself, eating alone, stopping in bakeries and getting my Korean right to order. It was absolutely magical, and, until my mental health started to plummet, I absolutely loved it.

Perhaps if I could do it again, as an adult who has a better grasp on my mental health, it would be a beautiful opportunity in the art of being alone.

It’s the little moments.

We tend to think of our lives in these great, grand moments. But, at the end of the day, it’s the little moments that matter. At the end of the day, you only have yourself, and the majority of the time you spend is alive is by yourself.

Look around. Take note of what’s around you. When you’re with people, chatting away and distracted, life becomes more about the people around you rather than the world. You’re missing out on a lot when you avoid the environment around you, so it’s a balance that only you can work on to divert attention from people, while fulfilling relationships, while also paying attention to the world.