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

by Lane Moore

The exceptional, overwhelming kindness of strangers who immediately see me and my heart as special and full and open and innately, unequivocally, deserving of love and care right out of the gate, no questions asked, has often left me gut-punched and confused. For years, I’d think that surely my family had to be right about me because they knew me best, they knew the truth: that I was nothing and no one and I was bad and horrible and should’ve been a baby in a dumpster, good riddance. Strangers were all just fooled by some surface-level magic I was performing—that had to be it—and if I’d spent any further time with them, if they really knew, they’d see it, they’d see the truth that my family was right. So I stayed away from people and wouldn’t get too close to them when they seemed like they wanted to love me and could love me and would love nothing more than to love me—if I’d let them. So I didn’t. It would’ve hurt too much to finally feel loved and then, once they’d realized they’d wasted their time, and I was bad and worthless, to have them leave and come back again, or become unsafe seemingly because the wind blew differently that day, just like my family. No thanks. Better to be alone the way I’d always been.