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

by Lane Moore

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.

I’m tired of pretending that laziness can replace thoughtfulness and still be acceptable to me.

It’s hard to know when to give up the fight. Some things you want will just never be right.

Not because I consciously knew she wasn’t a secure attachment, but because deep down, my brain wanted to go down that road because this is the road I know.

I didn’t understand how someone who seemed to be everything I’d wanted in a person could also become someone so harmful.

Personally, no one has ever told me to pick a label, but I can feel it in my gut that I need to,

What if you fall outside all the boxes? What are you supposed to do then, other than wrestle with the feelings of otherness,

There really is something about being able to put yourself into one concise, well-marked, tidy section of society, dusting your hands off on your pants.

you choose your labels. You choose those you show them to. You choose when the labels change, if they change.

It can be so easy to forget that not everyone deserves your shine.

Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can.

Of knowing things could still be new, that there were still so many good things left to experience.

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,

You know your whole story. You know everything. So believe yourself, validate yourself.

if you need to be alone right now, that’s what you need.

One of my favorite alone things is to let myself be as weird as I want to be.

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

“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.”

I took a leap of faith that maybe this unconditional love was as real as it seemed.

she found me when I wasn’t looking, and showed me true unconditional love I’d never known before.

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.

But if everyone did it, we wouldn’t feel alone ever. So be the idiot who cares too much, be the weirdo who makes a difference,