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

by Lane Moore

Let me tell you this: If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

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.

I grew up a real-life Matilda: surrounded by biological family who, in constantly rotating ways, couldn’t be bothered.

Emergency contact: ______. Until very recently, this simple question has made me cry in the waiting room of every doctor’s office I’ve ever been in. Because it makes me feel as I have always felt, very deeply: that I belong to no one.

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.

So what do you do? Well, as far as I can tell, you explain how your sweater got like this. Why it looks the way it does. And why you put patches where you did, to hold it together and make it look intentional. And you hope people will understand the parts you can’t hide anymore, even if you tried.

“We like each other . . . haha, no we don’t! Ginger and Baby Spice do! We aren’t gay, THEY’RE gay! We’re just playing gay CHARACTERS who do gay things, but we don’t because we’re NOT GAY. Hahaha. If you shout it, it becomes more true!!!”)

With Sam, she proved my worst fears to be true: that I was too much and needed too much. I’ve spent so many of my relationships being terrified the person I love will hurt me, and always questioning whether or not the other person really means what they say, and worrying if I love more, or feel more, and what that means if it’s true.

I think about that night all the time, that little kid desperate for someone to love her, take care of her, spend any time at all with her, make her feel connected to literally anyone or anything, and they just laughed. And left.

When you don’t have a baseline of love and security and home, and you finally get someone who can seemingly love you and you feel accepted and special and you feel like “Aw, is this home? Finally! I can’t wait! This is so great!” and then they kick you out, you feel like you’ve lost everything. You don’t have a foundation, so you look everywhere for one, which means the weight of any one connection is so heavy, so important, so delicate. If you lose it, what else will you have?

I’d made my “friends” my family, and you fight for your family, and you don’t leave them ever. But they’re not your family. And they know that. And you don’t.

my belief in love came with me, like a specific kind of Barbie comes with a specific kind of accessories. 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.

know now that these industry practices are put in place with the assumption that everyone in the arts comes from a wealthy family who will bankroll them for The Opportunity, thereby shutting out people who have families but don’t have money, or people who don’t have anyone at all, and however you feel about that concept, it ultimately results in a loss of art from some of the people I want to hear from most.

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.

Perfectly able to hold my own hand But I still can’t kiss my own neck. —WYE OAK, “CIVILIAN”

“You say, you say there’s a fence around me, I’m not letting you in / But I say it’s a climbable distance / You just don’t wanna put the time in,” which was inspired by my constant push and pull with Everett’s being annoyed with me for not being able to trust him immediately, and my hating him for choosing to love someone who had been through this much, and then yelling at her when she couldn’t shake off a lifetime of trauma and terror she didn’t even fully understand, because it would make his life more convenient.

At times I’ve struggled to feel seen, to have my history feel seen, to have where I come from feel seen because I “turned out great.” But that doesn’t mean that I Am Fine. I am working every day, tirelessly, like you wouldn’t believe, on being fine, fucking finally, can we get this over with, I’m so tired and I just want to travel and eat and smile and move through the world with a semblance of peace.

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

If you’ve ever been the Single Friend who complained about how everyone sucks and no one is worth dating, you’ve had at least one (if not, like, four hundred) coupled friends telling you, “Stop looking! That’s when love finds you.” And if you’re like me, you want to go over to that person’s house and knock everything off their shelves for sport.

Telling people who actively want to find love that they should stop wanting to find love so they can find love is like telling a depressed person they can be happy only once they don’t want to be happy. What the shit is that? It makes zero sense.

You rewatch your favorite shows because they’re like your family. The characters are people who are there for you when you need them, you’ve grown to love them, you know them well, you’ve spent so much time with them. In some cases, the shows were with you when you were growing up, they raised you, they’re your family. And when they’re done, you don’t want them to leave because then you’re alone again and your family is gone.” And he was very, very correct.

quiet knowledge that one day they would have everything, and no matter how long it took, no matter the number of grand gestures executed perfectly, time and again, no matter if she wasn’t ready or was afraid he’d hurt her or was mentally or physically sick or had been badly hurt before, he was her person, and he was happy to show her with every word he spoke and every action he took, and he would love her always, when she was ready.

If you’re reading this and you’re, like, “BUT I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!!” know that I am so happy for you and genuinely aspire to be you one day, instead of a caricature of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, hiding behind a backpack and glaring at you and your frankly very lovely decorations while I funnel Pixy Stix into my mouth.

this I Love Lucy chocolate-factory assembly line of reminders that I don’t fit, and I don’t have enough pockets for all these feelings.

1. No, you don’t deserve this.

2. No, you’re not a monster because you hate this time of year.

Yes, you’re allowed to celebrate or not celebrate the holidays however you want.

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. Most people will not understand how you have chosen to survive—and they don’t need to.

You are marvelously strong.

Yes, it’s totally normal if you get depressed even before the holidays start.

In the end, Thanksgiving is one day and Christmas is like 1.5. My whole life it felt like years getting through those days, but once I realized, “Hey, darlin,’ we just have to get through this one day and then done, back to normal. It’s just one day in your life, so let’s really enjoy it. Now what do we want to do?” I realized it’s so get-through-able.

If you beg people, “Please, I’ve already been through enough. Take good care of my heart because I won’t be able to handle it if you don’t,” and they say, “Of course, darling,” and then proceed to break everything in your life anyway, because fuck you, what do you do with that?

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.”

If you see a woman who is working super hard to become who she’s meant to be and to achieve the things she wants to achieve, and you have nothing to add to her life or to give back to her in any way, please just leave her the fuck alone.

I love that I can do things now in class that I couldn’t do a year ago. It’s a real-world confirmation that life can always get better, it can. Things that seem impossible for me to do or feel or have today could be totally different in six months. Knowing you truly can grow and change and be more than you think, in an easily measured way, just by showing up every day and trying, has been so healthy for me to see.

When we spoke recently, I was very depressed, and Mary asked what would help, and I said I didn’t want to say, but then decided I did. “People always offer to buy you a beer or something and I don’t want that. Can I be honest with you? Is that okay?” and she said it was. “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 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.

And if in the end I don’t get that, then what? What is left? And the only answer I have is that I am.

And not in an “ugh, I’m still here” way, but in an “I am still around and there is still time for things to change” way.

But my point is, I think that’s what you do. 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.