New York City is a weird place. It’s an island of roughly 1.6 million residents with no shortage of out-of-town guests or tri-state commuters on any given day. There are human beings everywhere, at all times. It’s the city of waiting in line for things and zero privacy. You constantly wonder if maximum capacity laws should be a concern of yours and walking through Times Square makes you think the world might be ending. Maybe that’s just me…
Yet, if you peel back a few layers and glance into the lives of those who call this grimy and grossly overpopulated city home, you’ll find varying levels of a little emotion we like to call:
loneliness.
There are 1.6 million reasons to feel lonely. Most of us have experienced at least one of them. We all have our triggers and even the most popular girl in school with a thriving social calendar, doting boyfriend and promising career in medicine can feel lonely. No one is exempt and everyone is susceptible.
I wish this was something we talked about. I wish conversations around loneliness didn’t come with negative connotations or the implication that one doesn’t have enough friends or they long for a partner to keep them company. Because oftentimes, neither of those sentiments are true.
I am someone who jam-packs my days with plans and meetings and errands and calls and anything else I can think of to make my head spin off my shoulders. My planner (because yes, I still write out my plans) doesn’t even make sense. Every corner of every page is filled. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I generally don’t stop doing things. I think I was born this way. I don’t know.
Regardless, such a calendar demands constant stimulation and nonstop human interaction. As of 2.5 months ago, I lived on Wall Street. Ever heard of it? Bustling, if you will. On top of that, and one another, I lived with three roommates. We turned a two bedroom apartment into four with a fake wall and just kinda lived like college students for the greater portion of our early twenties. Ah, yes. New York City bliss.
That said, between the ages of 23 and 26, I genuinely forgot what alone time felt like. I juggled a full-time job, part-time job, my own biz-nass, maintained 300 friendships and took time to love my family from a distance. I had zero downtime and essentially negative alone time.
Then a bunch of things changed. I moved to Brooklyn where I now have a bedroom with REAL walls and I live with one other person. It’s a quiet neighborhood where people go to bed at normal hours, with the exception of myself, as I write this at 1:02 in the morning. I quit my office job so when I do work, it’s from home. I commute to and from Manhattan for various reasons and for the most part I spend my days, alone.
In a matter of months, I went from constantly being surrounded by others to excessive amounts of time with, you guessed it, Morgan. I’ve never been happier with my life and the evolution of my days but I will say, the sudden spike in alone time took quite some getting used to. By its nature, it gives you time to reflect. Time that, in this hyper-connected world, we forget we need. Our minds raise the volume on our looping thoughts and all of a sudden, we find ourselves sitting with ideas or feelings we’ve never had. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
A few weeks ago, I read an Instagram post that said this: Of all the people on the planet, you talk to yourself more than anyone. Make sure you are saying the right things.
This hit me. Isn’t it obvious? Alone time spent fueling unhealthy thoughts warrants unhealthy outcomes. Duh. So, after a few weeks of adjusting to the lack of human bodies surrounding me at all times, I realized the words I was telling myself on a daily basis needed to take priority. More importantly, they needed to be kind.
Loneliness isn’t the absence of people in your immediate vicinity, but rather a product of your thoughts when you give yourself time to have them. At the end of the day, what we tell ourselves is our reality. We believe the words that circle our minds all day long.
Are you saying the right things?
I say it often. I love my life. It’s full and I am loved. But feelings of loneliness are inevitable. They’re something I’ve had the simple pleasure of experiencing over the past few months and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
Own your lonely and force your mind to be the company you keep. Be kind, and simply say the right things.
