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

by Lane Moore

Two years. It was beyond cruel, and I can see that only now. Throughout that time we didn’t kiss, we didn’t hold hands, we just existed in between, with him acting like everything was as it always was, and me playing along and crying the whole way home.

You can’t tell someone they’re all you think about and want, while they wait in a convent for you to actually be with them in any real way, and try to wrap up that box of bullshit in some mildly well put nonsense.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!

You already suffered through not having that baseline of love and support and now you’re just screwed and will never experience it because you were born into the wrong place?

Or people who say, “No one will ever love you as much as your mom,” which might be comforting to people who have great moms but is a powerfully harmful statement for literally everyone else.

Every now and then, I’ve had someone smile and tell me, “Someone definitely raised you right.” And I’ll get, without even thinking, very defensive, and reflexively respond, “Actually, I raised myself, so I guess that’s also true!”

Still, it is very commonplace for abusive or absent parents, once their (technical) child grows up and becomes successful, to suddenly become Proud Parents!

So if you raised yourself, and you’re reading this, I am so proud of you. You raised a hell of a kid. And it wasn’t easy—I can’t even imagine, no one can. (Okay, I kind of can, but still.) But you’re here and you could’ve easily backslid into pain and nothingness and worthlessness and hopelessness, and maybe you did backslide, time and again, but every time, you climbed back up and tried to be kinder and softer and find more room in your heart for compassion instead of hatred, hope instead of defeat. And let me tell you, someone (you) really raised you right.

I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t think I needed to start earning money so I could support myself.

I don’t want to brag, but I nailed the interview, having spent most of my childhood auditioning for pretty much everyone all the time. “Adopt me! Hear that I can really, really sing, I can! Please protect me, things aren’t great at home!” I had become very, very skilled at being poised and witty and very adult.

If I couldn’t have parents, I’d be everyone else’s parents. If no one was going to take care of me, I would take care of everyone.

And it was the worst. I’d gone from having this relationship with someone I was crazy, stupid in love with to having mediocre sex with people I hardly knew, hardly cared about, who hardly knew and hardly cared about me. It felt hollow and sad every time. But I kept trying to make myself do this thing I thought I was supposed to do, trying it on for size, even though it never, ever fit me.

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.

I am always so gutted when TV shows end, when a TV rewatch is done. Often I’ll go back and start the whole thing over again because I don’t want to leave that world.

Me and smiling friends lol

One of the biggest frustrations I have with TV couples in particular is that most writers have no clue what to do with them once they get together because that’s seen as boring. What a dangerous, depressing message to send to people: that the only exciting part of a relationship is before it even starts. The chase. That’s all.

I’ve burned out on the excitement I used to get from “I have a crush on you,” because nowadays that seemingly means literally nothing.

Am I the only one who has literally thought about dating every single person I’ve ever met who was in my age and sexual-preference range? Even if only for a second?

Also, what is a home? Is that actually a thing? Oh, it is? And everyone else has one but me? Great. Is this onion dip?”

cranberry sauce is the only Thanksgiving food worthy of coveting,

She gets me

Because hoo boy, it’s a good stretch of time right there, and if you spend the holidays alone, no matter how many times you’ve done it, it can seem like a never-ending reminder that you don’t fit (which you already knew).

Oh, also, you have every right to be spending the holidays alone or with people, crying or not crying. It doesn’t make you weak or a bummer or antisocial.

Maybe that means you don’t talk to them anymore, or you talk to them like you would a coworker who used to steal your lunch from the fridge—with distance and hesitance,

I usually get depressed like four days before pretty much every holiday (except Halloweeeeeeeeen!!!)

Then one night, something shifted. She didn’t get a job she wanted and she withdrew a frightening amount and went so dark I couldn’t see her, couldn’t reach her. To save her (see also: to get her to not abandon me), I took a break from my “I haven’t eaten or slept or stopped working in fifteen hours” day to make her a playlist to soothe her, wrote her a long email reminding her how incredible she was, started working on a short film so she could work on set with me, sent her voice memos letting her know I was there, and bought a shirt to give her when she came to visit. I poured it all out. Every bit I had. And she took them all and closed the door behind her. And this is why anxious attachment people shouldn’t date fucking avoidant people.

When I told her I was choosing her, she yelled at me and told me I should’ve gone with Chris, because we weren’t anything and I should go. I told her I didn’t want to, I wanted her, and she got very quiet again.

I knew this was a conversation like the thousands of others in which she would have a moment of clarity and insight and ownership of what she’d done, and acknowledge the colossal damage she’d caused, but in all likelihood, any recently developed insight would vanish by morning, just as it did when I had similar conversations with my family as a child.

the “let me take care of you, just kidding, I’m not”

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.”

“You are so lovable. It’s just so evident. You meet you for twenty seconds and you just know how lovable you are. And I don’t say this lightly, but I’d love for you to be one of my kids. And I mean that.”

again stuck in that mode of “oh I CAN” instead of the newfound world of “but you don’t have to”

When I feel like I truly have no one, I know on some level that’s not as true as it once was.

Being alone is not a life sentence.

Giving yourself permission to hang out with yourself can absolutely be a gift if you can learn to see yourself as an ally, someone who got you through everything so far, whether it was totally alone or not.

Bummed out about living alone? Here are some pros! When you are alone and living by yourself, no one cares if you do your dishes right away. Or put your shoes away immediately. Or really do anything involving cleaning if you don’t want to. As someone who has had, like, thirty roommates in their life, I can tell you, this is really a thing to value.

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.

Being alone is sometimes incredibly painful. Feel how painful it is, know that feeling will pass, and you’ll feel great again.

as a way to shift me from my pattern of “Do it, you piece of shit! Who cares if you’re in pain? Just shut the fuck up and do it!” into something gentler.

That I wished I could be like her. She was cold, she got a blanket. She was thirsty, she got water. She had to pee, she didn’t wait two hours until she was in physical pain and couldn’t hold it anymore, which I’ve always done and only recently realized was weird when I told a friend, “Yeah, I’ve had to pee for, like, two hours,” and they said simply, “Why???”

“I really just want someone to come over and brush my hair, or let me cry in their lap while they pet my head and tell me I’ll be okay.” And I cried harder because I felt so ashamed to want that from a friend, from someone who was not a romantic partner or a parent, because I didn’t have either right now, but I still wanted it.

I’m alone, perhaps, sure, yes, but I’m here. I’m still fucking here.