The Year of Being Alone
At the end of December 2015, I made a pact with myself: 2016 was the year I was going to be alone, truly alone.
To be alone didn’t just mean being single — a state I am acutely familiar with and need no practice with. (Ha.) To be alone meant embracing my solitude with purpose, and to live it deliberately, in the full, Rilkean sense of the word. I didn’t want to be single and constantly bemoaning and begrudging the fact.
I had my fair share of dates and adventures when I was younger, but I was tired of the carousel of online dating that seemed to go around endlessly, with no end in sight. I was tired of dramatizing stories of bad dates and loser ex-boyfriends, brandishing them like a knife — if I told them well enough, if I was entertaining enough, then I was a hero, and I couldn’t be pitied.
I liked to imagine that I set out on this quest deliberately and maturely. I was also hoping this would lead to the fulfillment of that magical prophecy I had only ever read about: when you finally learned to love yourself, all the love would come pouring in, rushing through the windows and filling up your life like delicious, pink bath bubbles.
In reality, I was at my wit’s end. I had changed so many things about my life, but each time I dug deeper, the work never seemed to be done. I had read all the books, recited all the affirmations, given up (most of) the gin and tonics, but I was still stuck. Angry, and exasperated with myself, with everything, I decided to go for broke.
In the tradition of such resolutions, in the new year I promptly found myself dating someone I once knew as a teenager. Although I was glad to have found someone who understood me, who I enjoyed spending time with, in my bones, I felt something was wrong.
Fear of being alone, I wrote to him, fear of not being alone. You understand what I mean, don’t you? I need to do this. I can’t be with you anymore.
He did, because he knew me too well.
So, why did you lead me on? Why did you even bother in the first place?
I was hurting other people because of my indecisiveness. I desperately wanted to skip to the happy ending, the reward after making the pact with myself in my head. But I knew I was lying to myself. I had done absolutely nothing, just mouthed the words.
(We didn’t even kiss.)
We parted ways shortly, without much fanfare. And I found myself alone again, feeling both sad and elated at the same time. Finally the experiment could start proper, I thought, ruefully.
Male Australian Aborigines have a rite of passage, that takes them from boyhood to man. Going walkabout — following a song line into the sacred heart of the world and emerging a different person — tested, tempered, and fully formed. It seemed like an amazing concept when I first read about it as a child.
In the Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell contrasted this to modern society, which lacks clear, structured rites that elders could guide the young through. Such rites could be dangerous and painful, but you were told what to expect, and what would come after. You were prepared for it, and the external, physical ritual gave structure to a process of internal transformation and growth.
Nowadays, there is precious little convention left to guide us through the world. Instead, the rules of adulthood and success are constantly shifting, and ill-defined. As a famous Creed goes, “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” This leads to confusion, despair, anomie.
Early in the year, I tried to find examples of women who were out there Doing It Right. Surely, I was not the first to have ever pondered what it meant to live as an Independent Modern Woman.
I discovered Jessa Crispin’s writing and devoured her book, “The Dead Ladies Project : Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries”. The Dead Ladies’ Project is Crispin’s own walkabout through cities haunted by past and potential lovers. In each city she tells the story of an artist who lived there in the past, interwoven with her own foibles and heartbreak.
The book made me laugh and cry, but it was her standalone article about St. Teresa of Avila that struck me the most.
Five hundred years after St. Teresa, and there are still very few models for women of how to live outside of coupledom, whether that is the result of a choice or just bad luck. I can’t remember the last time I saw a television show or a film about a single woman, unless her single status was a problem to be solved or an illustration of how deeply damaged she was.
“Can women truly have it all?” I read the headlines as I scrolled through my Facebook feed. “Learn to Lean In”, “working mom or stay home mom,” “can women date around like men do and be happy?” — everything was still within the limiting, and frankly, depressing framework of being with a partner. What about life outside of all that?
In St. Teresa’s time, intelligent women had only the option of either the nunnery or the asylum if they didn’t want to marry and fulfill traditional gender roles. I lived in the present, and I wasn’t interested in either. I had to find another way.
“I’m going to become celibate,” I announced to a friend, who laughed so hard, I was surprised he stayed in the highway lane. “I’m serious,” I said. “No more boys. Or girls. No dating. Nothing.”
“If you’re going to be celibate, that means you can’t touch yourself either,” he replied, equally seriously.
“That’s not what I meant!”
I wanted to observe, purposefully and non-judgmentally, my feelings, thoughts and actions during this period of time.
First, I set some ground rules:
- No relationships for the sake of being in a relationship.
- No casual hook ups.
- No self-pity. Refrain from being a bitter, soul-sucking hag at parties.
- You can choose to stop at anytime during the year, but you need to be absolutely clear about why you chose to do so. No lying to yourself.
The last one was going to be the hardest.
I worked in an industry that aimed to solve every problem with technology. “There’s an app for that,” as everyone used to say. If there wasn’t, you could be sure someone was building one at that very moment.
There was OKCupid and Tinder, for the romantics and realists. There were apps to help you network and make connections, a casual meetup/lunch-date/table-sharing/tractor-ride-share and every permutation in between.
But where do you go to be alone?
I deleted all the apps. I called my girlfriends, as often as I would have called a boy I was infatuated with. I sent them dozens of photos. Photos of our separate desk-lunches, selfies, internet memes. We spoke our own secret languages between ourselves, our in-jokes spawning their own vocabulary.
Whenever I wanted to cheer myself up, I would reach for my phone and scroll through our chat logs. I realised then, how much I would isolate myself when I was dating someone. I would put all that effort into crafting text messages or playing agonising games of social chicken with prospective dates that would go nowhere, and have precious little left for the friends in my life.
When I took that energy and channeled it into friendships, I was amazed at how much I got in return. With my friends I could be my unfiltered, unglamourous self.
I was not always successful at following my rule not to be a bitter hag. Sometimes we would go out at night and people watch at bars, and gleefully point out attractive patrons below from our balcony seats, far out of earshot.
On some nights people chatted with us, but most nights we were left to our own devices. I would sip my drink and feel conflicted. Of course I was young, and still good looking, I told myself. I was wearing makeup and my friends were amazing, funny, and gorgeous as well. I could play this game, if I wanted to, right? I just didn’t want to. Yes. That’s right.
At the end of the night, we would bundle ourselves into separate cabs. As I stretched out in my bed, I felt achingly lonely, but proud for not drinking myself stupid, for taking myself home like a sensible adult with early lunch appointments the next day.
“Home safe, showered, good night ❤,” I would text, half-awake, barely remembering to move my phone aside before I fell asleep.
I was sitting in my therapist’s office. I had seen this wonderful lady for nearly six years. She knew everything about me, every vice, every childhood fear, and every wish. She had helped me get back on my feet countless times.
I sat in front of her, seemingly put together. A comfortable life, a good job, my own room in a flat in a nice neighbourhood. Egyptian cotton sheets (bought on sale), ceramic knives in the kitchen, a wardrobe full of practical, well-made clothes. I had even gotten myself a fancy bamboo cutting board that week.
“When will it stop?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” She looked at me, as calm and unreadable as ever.
“When will I get better? I mean, when will I truly be well?” I gestured to the room around us. It was tastefully furnished, comfortable, lit by natural light. “When will I stop needing this?”
She gave me another inscrutable look. I imagined a little pang of pity or sadness on her face, but it was gone the moment I tried to focus on it.
“Come for the retreat this year. It will be good for you.”
The first problem that arises from sitting by yourself and confronting your inner landscape, I soon discovered, is not grappling with questions of God, or Christian morality. The first thing you come up against is yourself, and all your bleak, jagged edges.
The problem is not with the outside world. It’s not about people who won’t write you back, how society judges single women past a certain age. It isn’t about the distressing carnival of Friday night in town, or the evolution of the fuckboy, or whether you should grow your hair long again to met some arbitrary beauty standard.
These things simply are. They exist, and you exist in a world that contains them. No amount of railing against the world will change that overnight.
The heart-sickness comes from inside you — you alone decide how happy or unhappy you want to be.
It is tempting to say that the revelation alone was enough to change how I felt — it was not — but once I started asking the right questions, I could practice living them. Study, work, contemplation: if it was good enough for St. Teresa, it was certainly good enough for me.
I rediscovered the joy of reading. I started drawing again, something I had abandoned in my undergrad days. I dyed my hair platinum blonde, then silver, and black again and no one blinked. I started my first tattoo sleeve.
I ate by myself, and watched movies by myself, until it stopped feeling like a chore, and simply a matter-of-fact. I found myself looking forward to shop alone with no one to rush for. If I wanted to go somewhere, I took myself.
I found myself having open conversations with people I never thought I would ever speak to. Other women, eating alone, and sharing tables at lunchtime. Postal workers. Women in stores, sales assistants who wanted to talk about my tattoos.
I tried to be more healthy. I took up yoga. I met a wonderful instructor and was introduced to more people in the community. I started meditating again. This year I hiked my first short trail after being inactive and creaky and making excuses forever.
I saw my friends as often as we all could. It wasn’t always easy with our schedules, but we made time deliberately for each other. I would travel a hour to see them for two hours over dinner, staying out like teenagers until the last train on a weekday night. It was work, but we made it happen. (Just like any good relationship.)
Somewhere along the way, I stopped missing the idea of a romantic partner. That’s what it was, anyway. Just an idea, and never a real person.
Being alone isn’t an unnatural state. Many people long to un-complicate their lives, and find time to be with themselves, but it is not an easy wish to express. We worry about being perceived as anti-social, selfish, unlovable.
The strange and wonderful thing is that when I told others about my plan — hesitantly, awkwardly, at first — they amazed me with their responses.
“That’s a wonderful idea, I’ve always wanted to try that.”
“I know exactly how you’re feeling right now. I feel the same way. I just don’t need the drama in my life.”
“It’s been one year, so you should celebrate!”
Being alone is difficult but it is also startlingly simple — who else can we depend upon to be there for us, in the quiet hours, except ourselves? If we can’t live with ourselves, who can we expect to want to live with us?
There is no final scene. Specifically: no pink champagne bubbles rush in to sweep you off your feet into a whirlwind romance. No one bumps into you in a bookstore and drops the exact same title you were holding. You don’t meet the One. Nothing that seismic happens, or has happened since, although you do meet a lot of interesting people.
Instead, you find yourself drinking tea and watching the sunrise in northern Thailand, having not spoken to anyone since the night before. Observing your heart. See how the light touches the fields, warms the grass and your skin.
A season for everything: for the fields to fallow; for being young; for learning; for forgetting; for being in love.
The year is ending (has ended, will end), and I am still alone. But my life is already full of love and beauty — my friends, my books, my art. Whether planned or accidental, celibacy hasn’t stopped me from being happy, or traveling or having adventures.
I will be alone until the day I’m not. But I am not going to mind it, any more.
“But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342–ca. 1416)
