Why Moving Out Was a Blessing in Disguise
Your space has to be your own.
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
— Winston Churchill
For a large part of my adult life, I stayed in my parent’s house. It was a big house where I had more space than I could fathom. And still, the space wasn’t mine. With all the fancy décor and all the amenities of the world, the house still remained my parent’s. Irrespective of the fact that it housed my memories of a lifetime- including my first phone call with my teenage boyfriend to the first time I snuck out to when I topped my college and my dad decided to give me my first sip of alcohol, it still never felt mine.
I loved the house dearly but I wasn’t growing there anymore.
Despite the fact that I was doing okay financially in my fancy corporate job, the thought of moving out of my parent’s house never crossed my mind. In my culture, women live with their parents until they get married (unless they have to work in a different city) and then move to their husband’s parent’s place. So everyone was clear, the only way I could leave was if I got married. And I had the perfect plan in place, a strong relationship that would materialize into marriage and a goal to move into my husband’s house.
And then it all fell apart.
The relationship broke and I was left alone in my parent’s house mid-pandemic. A lot of people told me that a change of scenery would help so I traveled to a few places but honestly, who was I fooling. Every time I went home, I’d be drowning in the sorrows of my failed relationship.
So, I decided to move out of my house in the same city to give myself some respite. And hence began the part where I moved out but with roommates.
It’s so lonely.
The first thought after moving into a new space after a breakup was just that it’s so lonely. Scary. The silence is almost deafening. The sunset is daunting. The food isn’t tasty and it’s cold and the kind of cold that sends chills down your spine every few minutes. You look at your phone but suddenly Instagram isn’t enticing. You want to call your friends but you don’t want to talk. You can’t call your parents because that would mean you lost. You switch on your favorite sitcom on Netflix but it’s not funny today. You pour yourself a glass of wine but it tastes like crap. You almost wonder if alcohol always tastes like shit. And time? Time passes so slowly. It’s like you realize the passing of every minute.
And yet, somehow time passes so quickly and crawls at the same time.
The environment isn’t known, and you miss the familiarity of home. But you make a choice. A choice to free yourself from your pattern and move into this new zone, where you have the freedom to be whoever you want to be.
You get a sense of what you like.
Sure home is comfortable but it’s also where you’ve been taught how to do most things. For 25 years of my life, I woke up and ate breakfast first thing in the morning unless I was waking up ridiculously early. And then, I moved out. I eat when I’m hungry around 11 am now, and not as soon as I wake up. This habit was formed because I was not dependent on anyone else.
However small this example may be, living alone does give you a sense of what you like. As you grow up, you pick up a lot of habits from the people and the environment around you. Some benefit you, some don’t.
And as my favorite band Coldplay says, “If you never try, you’ll never know.”
So you try and live with a lot of habits that you absorb only to filter out a few that you genuinely like and then continue to live with it.
People see you in a new light.
Once you’ve settled in your new space, your parents and other elders in the family start seeing you as a responsible, older adult. I’ve been an adult for 8 years now but really became one in the last 1.
Some of my family members even trust me with my baby cousins now because they are confident that I won’t lose them. (Remember the episode from Friends where Rachel is babysitting Ben?)
My niece comes and stays with me every once in a while now and my sister’s confident that I can take care of her.
You have to be responsible.
You can bring anyone home now.
That statement is so powerful. Your friends, your men, your women, anyone you want can come. But do you want to wake up to new people and regret later? Every person that you bring in your space whether physical or mental impacts you in ways you don’t know. Be cautious of who’s coming in and where.
The choice to make these decisions gets overwhelming. I want friends, but what if they aren’t good for your mental health. How do I choose what’s for the best here?
Taking responsibility for your actions is something that I was just learning. I couldn’t just go out and do whatever I wanted to. It made me a more structured and thoughtful person.
You really are enough.
This was perhaps the most important and most fulfilling learning of living on my own. When all the other feelings subside, you learn to be okay with yourself. You have your own inside jokes where you end up laughing by yourself at 3 am. Re-watching your favorite sitcom with your favorite drink for Fridays or something as simple as doing a workout by yourself every morning.
But the realization that you’re enough is not limited to enjoying your own company. It also means being your own person through hardships and pitfalls. It means making decisions that are good for you, day in and out. It means realizing that you’re invincible just with your own support. Don’t mistake this for not co-existing. It simply means that you can co-exist without dependency and that truly is what makes you so much stronger.
Living alone is an enlightening and powerful experience. While there are days when you cry yourself to sleep, there are also days when you smile at how far you’ve come, and all in all, you learn to live with both- the good and the bad.
Let me know how your experience of living by yourself in your late 20s has been.
