On solitude

it might just be your best friend

When I was in my twenties, I dreaded spending nights alone. I stayed in relationships for longer than I should have. I arranged dinner dates with people I didn’t like, simply because they were available and a meal at a mediocre Italian restaurant was preferable to microwaving a container of Trader Joe’s chicken tikka masala and eating it on my Ikea futon alone. (I cooked once in the studio apartment where I lived for six years: carbonara that devolved into curdled eggs.)

One of my favorite solo runs was along Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, New Zealand in March 2020, before the world shut down.

I don’t know when this fear of solitude set in — I’m an only child, and I used to relish long hours alone in my bedroom, inventing narratives for stuffed animals and listening to this one cassette tape of ‘80s rock hits over and over and over again. I’m going to guess that college changed me, for the better, in many ways, but by the time I arrived at 22, I was convinced that there was goodness to be found in company. Constant company. Save for showering and the unconscious hours of sleep, for the better part of a decade, I spent very little time by myself.

Why am I telling you this? I have, thanks to Kristen Iskandrian’s thought-provoking Substack, been thinking about what happened to my inner weirdo.

More rooms than doors

To be sure, she’s still alive and well, as evidenced by Nikhil’s reticence to leave the house with me in certain outfits. (Was this dress the right dress to wear to our country club orientation? I stand by it. He’s lucky he didn’t meet me when I had blue hair.) But owing to the Internet, the ever-present compulsion to market oneself as a brand, and, I suppose, the human desire to want to fit in, my inner weirdo is generally covered in Lululemon and those black Celine sunglasses that everyone has. She really only comes out when I’m alone. Which means: I have to prioritize time alone.

I’m only recently coming around to this realization. I chronically over schedule myself, loathe to miss out on a good time or a good story. Today, however, I made a vow to socialize with no one in three dimensions except for Nikhil, who will be watching what he says is the most important football game of the year when he comes home from golf. (Somehow, they are all the most important football game of the year. Make it make sense.)

My theory: while original thought and creativity can flourish in the company of others, I find that to be truly myself, to edge into the corners of my brain where all the un-cliché, un-people pleasing thoughts reside, I have to be by myself. I have to dance on the edge of boredom, maybe even fall in.

I won’t say that I relish a string of days or nights alone — part of the pleasure comes in their rarity and the need to carve them out — but I don’t reach for my phone desperate to make plans in the way I once did. I say no to a lot and try not to feel bad about it.

No shade to anyone who hates solitude. Been there! But, if you’re looking for an excuse to give it a go, here it is. Nurture your inner weirdo. Go on a hike or a vacation or eat a meal at a restaurant alone — or just sit on your couch and see what happens. Give her/him/them time and space to come out. They’re still in there, I’m sure of it, and you never know what they’ll think of next.