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

by Lane Moore

If you tell someone your parent is an alcoholic or an addict, they seemingly, on some level, get that you had a rough childhood. You don’t need to expand for hours, trying to prove your case like a lawyer with the odds stacked against him.

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, if you would just do the right thing, whatever that is, only God knows, but you should die trying.

At this point in my life, I often fear it’s too late, as if there were a sign-up deadline for intimacy and friends and family and I just kept missing it.

I was jealous that I’d never in my life had the luxury of that kind of ignorance—the innocence we all deserve to have as children, and ideally as adults.

I had a weirdly competitive streak for a long time about being the most romantic, movie-moment-creating person ever, I think partly as a challenge and partly as a chance to show my partners, “Yo, this is the kind of love I want, FYI, but also look how much I love you!!!”

Being alone is not a life sentence. I know it feels like it at the time, but I promise you, you will not be alone for the rest of your life. And if you are—which I am not going to say that’ll never happen because I’m starting to see that maybe, in my own way, I will always be kind of alone—okay, let’s see what happiness can be found there. 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.

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. You know your whole story. You know everything. So believe yourself, validate yourself. Plus, even though movies and TV haven’t accurately nailed the portrayal of this yet, you can have so much fun by yourself. List the things you’d want to do with other people. Go to the museum? Not a doubles activity. Go to a movie? Such a great thing to do alone. Tennis? Play against the wall. Especially if you don’t have friends who make you feel safe and loved and heard and supported and special and great. It’s absolutely better to be by yourself than with someone you don’t even like, or whom you do like but they don’t make you feel super great. Man, the number of times I went to parties I fucking hated with people who were jerks, even though I knew I’d have more fun by myself, even if that fun just meant sitting in a room alone silently is . . . too many times. While most people hate sleeping alone, it’s also important to note that sleeping in a queen- or king-size bed all by yourself is magnificent. Honestly, being able to sleep in any bed all by yourself is pretty fantastic, but in bigger beds you can really try some shit out. What if I slept diagonally so my whole body is across the bed? Ooooh. What if I slept so my head is where my feet should be? Ooooh. Man, I am good at havi...

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.

You can be not perfect and still be loved? THAT’S SO COOL!

I still have fears that maybe I don’t get a soul mate the way everyone else has them, maybe I don’t get to belong the way I want to, I fucking hope not, but I’m still recovering right now and it can be hard to believe in. And if in the end I don’t get that, then what? What is left?

You book that trip for yourself, you take yourself to dinner and enjoy it the same as if someone else took you out. 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. Maybe all that shit boomerangs around, maybe it doesn’t. I can’t know. 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, be the person who, even if you never know it, kept someone from wanting to die because you smiled at them on the street. And in that way, in the smallest of ways, you’re a little less alone. Because someone will remember you forever. In the way that I remember everyone who has ever been kind to me. I keep them all with me, so I know exactly where they are at all times. But truly, as borderline depressing and kind of lame as it is, I’m a little less alone because you bought this book and you’re right there, right now, being alone with me. And you should know I’d hug you if I could. So, so much. And I would tell you that you are loved and you matter and you are trying so hard. And that you deserve love and that any love you haven’t received yet is waiting for you somewhere out there, and I know you’re getting impatient and you’re ready for it now, but it’s coming, hold tight. And to not let the world and how it’s been in the past make you cold and shut-down and scared, because it can just as...