Welcome to Are You Mad At Me? — a weekly newsletter about anxiety, perfectionism, addiction, self-esteem, living with unanswered texts, recovering from people-pleasing and becoming better friends with ourselves.
When I first moved to New York for college, I discovered the joy of spending time with myself. I had been a couple years into my spiritual journey at that point, and knew that the root of my issues was an inability to sit still with myself in my skin. I desperately craved the company of other people because my own company felt insufficient. Also I was pretty mean to myself, and who wants to spend time with that. I could not be alone without feeling lonely, or bored, or scared that everyone was hanging out without me and here I am spending time with a person I don’t even like that much. So I started to learn how to take myself on dates. How to sit at a table and have dinner and not run through all the hypothetical reasons the table next to me could have to justify my party-of-one. How to sit at a coffee shop and not need to take out my phone because somehow I think that’s going to make me feel less alone (but actually it causes the symptoms it deems to treat). And most importantly, how to go to the movies alone - which quickly became a treat, a balm. A way for me to be alone, but not alone, because I was surrounded by other people who even if they were with their partners or children or current situationship, for those 2 hours, in the darkness and amidst the whiff of over-buttered popcorn, they too were alone. In their skin. In their seat. In that dark vessel.
Whenever I would feel homesick or lonely or far from myself, I would walk down to the Lincoln Center theater on 63rd and Broadway and tuck myself into the comfort of a terribly-reviewed movie (the only kind I actually like). And I’d walk the 20 blocks home and see all these apartments with their lights on and again, I was alone, but not really alone. And I would rub shoulders with people either heading to or from the subway, again, I was alone, but not really alone. I was held by people I’d never know and places I’d never go into. That comforted me.
A couple weekends ago I went to a movie alone on a Saturday night. Most of the time, I can embrace a weekend night by myself without much shame or discomfort. But this was the 3rd Saturday in a row that I was…alone…and I felt anxious about it. In full transparency, I was supposed to have a date that night but I had had a difficult therapy session the day before, and was just very weepy and sensitive and hanging out with a guy who I barely knew didn’t feel like the safest, warmest place to take my tender little heart. So I canceled the date, and found myself without a plan. I reached out to a couple of friends, but most were with their significant others or weren’t free. There was a party I could have gone to with some acquaintances, but that too didn’t feel like the place you go when you just cried and know that concealer isn’t going to cover up the red around your nose from the overuse of scented Kleenex. I didn’t have to be alone on this Saturday night; I had options - a date I didn’t have to cancel, a party I could have rallied for. But I knew throwing myself into the arms of a man who didn’t really care if I woke up happy or sad the next day might mean I avoided being alone, but was a sure express route to feeling lonely. And going to a party where my cheeks would hurt from feigning a smile as I wondered every 11 minutes if it’s been enough minutes that I can leave now without seeming rude or a loser might mean I avoided being alone, but was a sure express route to feeling lonely.
So I bought myself a 6:30 movie ticket, put on my Uggs (very relevant detail), wiped my tears and got in my car. As I filled my coke and held my popcorn, I felt another wave of sadness come over me.
In some ways, I felt so alone. Here I am, at Century City (which is where I had my first date in high school by the way), surrounded by couples and families and teenagers in their phone-obsessed clusters. And I’m alone. I’m at this Coke machine alone. I bought seat H9, alone. I’m going to watch this movie and process this movie and think about this movie after the movie, alone. And in other ways, I didn’t feel alone at all. In a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it, I could feel my own companionship like an arm around my shoulder. I could feel the way I had held myself through a hard day and decided that my own company was what I needed, even if it isn’t what I wanted. That my own company was the safe, warm place to land. I can promise you that that wasn’t always the case. When I lived with rampant self-criticism and shame, my own company was not pleasant or comforting at all. And today, most of the time, it really is.
And in some ways, I felt so lonely. I could list all the people in my life who love me and appreciate me and nurture me. I could rationalize to myself that I am not “alone” and thus there’s no need to feel lonely. But we all know that’s not how it works. I have been in the middle of a black tie party and felt as alone as a buoy out at sea, and I have been in the corner of my couch with a book and felt a part of everything around me. Alone does not mean lonely. And lonely does not mean alone. And in that moment, I could lean into the ambiguous middle — that I am not alone, and I am feeling lonely. To the chagrin of my black and white brain, both of those can be true at the same time.
In so many beautiful ways, I am very far from being alone. And in other ways, I am aware of my aloneness these days even in the midst of that. There is an aloneness in being single. An aloneness in healing layers of childhood grief that come up at unexpected and highly inconvenient times and don’t seem to match any of the present day events in your life. An aloneness in being an introvert but still wishing you had more people and plans as options, just in case. An aloneness in really sitting in the reality that the chapter of life you were in is really over, and it’s just hitting you now. An aloneness in realizing you’re in between two chapters but you don’t know how to explain that to anyone because they don’t have a table of contents either.
And some days that feels like loneliness, independently of if I am physically alone. Growth can feel lonely. Being in the midst of change you don’t yet see the full picture of can feel lonely. Outgrowing old friends but not having made the new ones yet can feel lonely. Being kind to yourself when every voice in your head is telling you to try harder, make it better, be perfect is lonely.
So I am all the things right now. I am alone. And I am also not alone. I am lonely. And I am also not lonely. I have 3 dinner plans this weekend and next weekend I might not leave the house. I stay close to myself, even when it feels like that self inside me is running the other direction. I try not to say yes to plans because it feels like I should. “I don’t want to,” is a reason for not going that I trust wholeheartedly. Every time I have said yes to something to avoid feeling alone or lonely, I’ve ended up feeling both. It doesn’t mean we don’t need other people and things - friends, family, loved ones, the case of the Real Housewives — to give us connection and love and nurturance. Of course we do! But I want to seek out those connections because I want them, not because I am avoiding what might come up if I am by myself.
I want more friends. And I’d love a relationship. And my life is so full of people who love me in deeper ways every day. And some days I feel alone in my own company, and some days I feel like I’m spending time with someone I’ve known my whole life.
May we lean into the alone. May we lean into the lonely. May we realize that maybe the solitude is not the disease, but the medicine.
You're such an incredible writer -- bringing words to the human experience.
Beautiful! I was just thinking last night I was starting to feel lonely in the depths of the cold winter weather here. Happy to see this in my inbox!