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

by Lane Moore

When it’s not that simple, or you don’t have any of that information, it’s that much easier to go your whole life thinking it’s just you; you’re too sensitive, you’re wrong, you need too much, you could fix your relationship with them if you wanted to,

that desperation to believe that the people who hurt you didn’t know, had a rough day, aren’t bad people, that it was all a misunderstanding.

The Friend Zone, while not always ideal, is still a goddamn gift, and really, the definition of true love.

girls are told in not so many words that our main job in life is to please men, don’t embarrass them, don’t make them angry, give them what they ask for, be nice.

because she was another person I couldn’t save, couldn’t protect, and why was no one protecting us?

cry and still be lovable, even if we’re in pain sometimes.

break in front of each other, and pick up the pieces together,

a tragic backstory and a desperate need to belong to someone.

one day I’d be seen, understood, and loved. I’d belong somewhere.

My Barbie came with too much empathy, a heart as big as every ocean, and a mission to figure out how people find love and why, and how I could one day find it too.

I saw my soul mate as someone who wanted the best for me, someone who wanted me as safe and happy as possible until they could come and make me as much of each as possible themselves.

You do the best you can with what you have and where you came from

You can’t change what they did, but you can change your landmarks.

that’s the life you’re supposed to have at that age. Stupid and frantic, and fucking up and getting bailed out and trying again.

I had become a creature who could deny all my physical and emotional needs existed.

Better to leave after they’ve been nice to me for three seconds, because what if this is a trick and staying for a full five seconds results in a punishment?

as any previously held faith slipped through my fingers like air.

I’d rather just imagine you’re my family in my head rather than get to know you and potentially feel sad.”

It would’ve hurt too much to finally feel loved

maybe the people who knew me for five minutes and immediately saw how lovable I was saw it because it permeated everything around me and was refracted all around the room, so was clear to anyone who was paying attention.

Suffice it to say, I both desperately wanted him to take care of me like this forever and ever, and also wanted to spit in his face for it because I was so scared that if I accepted this care, my freedom would somehow vanish and I’d be trapped here, unable to say no,

And unfortunately I was still a scared little kid who was programmed to merely survive and had no chill.

I couldn’t just let him make my life easier; I didn’t know how to.

I didn’t know if this was as good as relationships got or if I just wanted too much.

I met him now, I’d be able to better communicate the issues I had, be able to explain why I got terrified when he’d do certain things, be able to ask him to do things differently, to be able to examine his belief systems and the ways he did or didn’t support me.

thinking how truly fucking beautiful he was, but never saying it because you can’t let them know they are everything to you. That is how they leave.

I knew that and continuously made myself smaller and quieter and prettier, yes dear, to please him.

when I spoke up, spoke out, got louder, achieved more, he would then make me smaller and quieter again by not acknowledging any of it and reminding me that I was nothing

I felt like I had met the monster my mom warned me was inside even the best of men.

“You say you have no time, and if you did, you’d spend it with me, but the internet exists and I see you doing things without me, so why won’t you just keep me or let me go?”

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,

The more he was able to provide better love and caretaking than I’d had in my childhood, the more frightened I became, and the more he subtly put me down and the less he understood why I was scared, the more I thought, “Ah yes, I need more than this. And I know how to operate in a place where I need so much more than I am getting.” So we settled into a place where he came and went, and I waited on the front steps for him to come back again, desperate to do more for him, care more for him, whatever it took to get him to stay.

Recreating unhealed patterns from childhood

If I have ever loved someone on any level, in a way I always will.

have absolutely thought, during my lowest points, about my exes who were everything to me and wondered if reaching out to them would help, looking for the cure in the cause of the disease.

We are not born knowing how to love anyone,

Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment.

Everything, culturally, is weighted by whatever you were born into.

“Are you close with your family?” More often than not, they say something like, “Of course. So close,”

Does not equate to healthy relationship

saw love, you grew up with love, you have love all around you, you know you deserve it, you can both receive and give it,

why do we give parents credit for their children automatically?

But in our culture, if anything happens to you as an adult, good or bad, we assume it’s your parents’ achievement or fault.

I thought if I couldn’t find the person I’d been waiting my whole life for, I’d be that person for other people.

If no one was going to tell me all the things I’d always wanted to hear, I’d make damn sure as many people on earth as possible heard them.

He was eight, and he’d already been taught that there was nearly nothing as shameful or disgusting, or whisper-quiet-inappropriate, as liking something feminine.

“You don’t have to do anything, ever. But you can also do everything, if you want to.”

I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting.

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.

It no longer seemed worth it to try to be someone I’m not, especially when I love all the things that I am.

honestly, I’m just so fucking over people telling me the right way to do things.

favorite number has always been two.