How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

by Lane Moore

Even when I was ten, I was easily forty in trauma years)

Telling people who actively want to find love that they should stop wanting to find love so they can find love is like telling a depressed person they can be happy only once they don’t want to be happy. What the shit is that? It makes zero sense.

And because we’ve all been taught guys want girls who are chill and don’t “think like that” (yeah, god forbid you want something real and admit that openly), we lower our expectations because, again, we want to be chosen. And in that way, without our even knowing it, it becomes a contest for who can withstand the most. We know trying to change someone won’t work, so we’ve created a work-around for this, which is supporting our partners while they treat us like shit, and being so so patient while they hopefully magically become better people. Which is totally different from trying to change someone! It is! Because obviously trying to change someone is so stupid, haha, for sure. And we’re not doing that! We’re just providing the emotional labor and the tools and the insight and a place for their pain and rage to go, holding anything they need like an unpaid therapist, so they can magically change on their own. Please. It’s the same thing.

Before I first started watching the American version of The Office, I remember my friend Joy telling me, “Jim Halpert is like porn for female writers,” and then later watching the show and thinking, “Truer words were never spoken, my friend Joy.”

People who reject you for being broken after they’re the ones who broke you, or who act like they’re not the problem and the problem is the issues you had before them, are evil. They just are. And also, it’s, like, “Yeah, but you compounded those preexisting issues like interest, asshole.”

I’ve realized that sometimes being alone actually truly is better than being around people, especially if they’re the wrong people. Sometimes you just need time to yourself and it doesn’t make you weird or wrong. It’s a sign you really like spending time with you, which is healthy as shit, so good job.

Also, don’t be too worried if you want to be alone a lot lately. Bamboo grows underground for three years before it sprouts up to thirty feet tall.

Nothing blooms year-round, so if you need to be alone right now, that’s what you need.

And even if you fear that you’re at the beginning of a depressive spiral that will ultimately lead to you failing at life because you can’t be around people anymore, you’re probably not. You probably just need a break and it’s okay to take it. Plus, seeing all your friends regularly can be a fucking hassle. Everyone’s busy, you’re coordinating schedules, people are flaky. There’s that one friend who always says, “We need to hang out!!!” and never tries or follows through and you’re just, like, “Why do you even exist?” (in my life, not in the world, but still). It’s so nice not having t...

Things that seem impossible for me to do or feel or have today could be totally different in six months. Knowing you truly can grow and change and be more than you think, in an easily measured way, just by showing up every day and trying, has been so healthy for me to see.

We section off physical comfort and intimacy so heavily. We reserve it for partners only, and platonic friends can only chitchat and that’s it. How can you tell people to be okay with being single while also telling them they can only get the basic human needs of physical touch from not being single? But then, TV characters cry in each other’s laps, and race over with ice cream and hair braiding when someone so much as drops their car keys. And we’re told this is normal and everyone but you has six loyal friends they see every single day. It’s incredibly frustrating. So you take physical affection when you can get it, almost feeling guilty when you do. You might sleep with someone just to get to the cuddling part, knowing full well if the cuddling had been on the table, you might not have even slept with them to begin with. You might get super happy when your yoga teachers do adjustments because having someone touch you in a safe, gentle way, even for two seconds, feels like it changes your whole world. I know I do. Partly because human beings are designed to be physically comforted by one another, but also because it’s soothing parental behavior I didn’t often get as a kid. So when I get it now, it’s the closest thing I can get to immediate happiness.

I thought having a dog would be another example of my taking care of everyone but myself, but I quickly realized it was the opposite. All the things I give to this dog—the twelve thousand times a day I tell her I love her and she’s beautiful and special and perfect, all the belly rubs and dog massages I give her—are greatly appreciated, and that love is returned. And on the days when I can’t do that as much, or I get wrapped up in work and forget, I always think she’ll be mad at me, she’ll hate me now, she’ll leave. And she doesn’t!!! That’s a thing??? You can be not perfect and still be loved? THAT’S SO COOL!

And every time I have to feed her, it’s a good reminder I have to feed myself too. Every time I have to take her outside, I probably needed to go outside too. A reminder to take care of her is a reminder to take care of myself.

And to that end, I’ve started to, every time I tell her, “You are so beautiful, I love you so much, you are so special,” I will add, “And I am so beautiful, I love myself so much, I am so special,” because I need to hear it too. We all do.

I’m alone, perhaps, sure, yes, but I’m here. I’m still fucking here. And not in an “ugh, I’m still here” way, but in an “I am still around and there is still time for things to change” way. When I’m in a lot of pain, it’s harder to believe things can change radically.

You take all that love you keep giving to selfish idiots and try to throw some of it in the general direction of your own heart and you pray even a little bit of it sticks there.