How To Be Soul-Crushingly, Devastatingly, Mind Numbingly Alone

Macaulay Culkin isn't the only person who can enjoy being home alone.

I'm terrible at dating myself. For the longest time, I thought that the boys who liked me had terrible taste in women, so when I was left to my own devices after another devastating break up, the worst part was waking up in the morning and being alone.

Loneliness is like a petri dish for depressive episodes. The lack of human interaction is a spectacular breeding ground for the disgusting mess that is depression, and for the last 22 years, being lonely was the scariest thing ever. I didn't know what tricks my mind was going to play on me, I didn't know what part of me was going to take over: the mania or the depression. So, needless to say, I avoided being alone for as long as I possibly could.

But, you can't go your whole life avoiding the person who's going to be there from womb to tomb (my therapist said that and it is one of my favorite phrases of all time.) I want to say that I "forced myself" to be alone, as if it was some kind of form of exposure therapy where I isolated myself from the world in order to fall in love with being alone. No, loneliness was a creature that lingered in the corner of my room like a sleep paralysis demon, waiting to strike and cripple me. When my friends would leave for the weekend and my boy of the month wasn't responding to me, I'd spend days in bed waiting for the painful loneliness to subside.

You can't live like that. It's not sustainable. Something has to change.

It happened gradually. The feeling of wholeness and satisfaction when the laughter abates, the front door shuts and the porch lights are turned off. I am still me in the absence of those I love, those I hate, those I am indifferent towards. At the end of the day, it's me. It'll always be me.

You know how terrifying that realization is for a seventeen year old who absolutely hates herself? Nadine in The Edge of Seventeen said it best:

“You know, ever since we were little, I would get this feeling like... Like I'm floating outside of my body, looking down at myself... And I hate what I see... How I'm acting, the way I sound. And I don't know how to change it. And I'm so scared... That the feeling is never gonna go away.” — Nadine in The Edge of Seventeen

I remember hearing those lines in the theater for the first time and crying so hard I couldn't breathe. Someone had finally put it into words! To be so broken and self-deprecating that the thought of being stuck as the same person for the rest of my life was devastating. I hated myself more than anyone else could ever hate me, and the worst part is, I thought everyone really did hate me that much.

You know how people are innocent until proven guilty? In my world, you hate me until I can prove you don't. It's just second nature for me to have the impression that my existence is a burden on everyone around me, especially on myself. This is why being alone was so scary, this is why I avoided it for so long.

The lack of human interaction is a spectacular breeding ground for the disgusting mess that is depression, and for the last 22 years, being lonely was the scariest thing ever.

At 22 years old, I realized I needed to stop avoiding myself. There is so much beauty in the world when you allow yourself to experience it all by yourself, without needing to be "on" for the people around you.

When I really started to take this whole "dating myself" thing seriously, I took myself out of Davis and drove to Point Reyes, stopping at a cheese shop along the way, buying a loaf of bread from a supermarket, and finally parking my car in front of the seashore to watch the sunset. All by myself. I have sleeping bags packed in my car for this exact reason: to sit on the beach without freezing to death (NorCal beaches are notorious for being the coldest places on planet earth).

And it was in that moment that I realized, being alone isn't half bad, and angels started singing, and the sun glowed above me and... yeah that's total B.S. I had a beautiful day all by myself, I made a whole big deal about it on Instagram and to my therapist, and then I promptly went back to Davis, got under my covers, and called it a day.

It takes time and effort to really get the hang of loneliness, especially when you spent 22 years avoiding it. It's like Taylor Swift said: "I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror."

It's just second nature for me to have the impression that my existence is a burden on everyone around me, especially on myself.

Loneliness takes practice. It's hard work and it really takes time to start to get the hang of it. Hell, I'm still getting used to it. I'm the kind of person who can't leave their house unless they have something planned. I'd beg my friends to call me in the morning and encourage me to leave the house because I couldn't get myself motivated enough. That's a lot of pressure to put on someone! But, this was my way of begging for help in the form of, you guessed it, human interaction. I will seek out validation in any form it'll come in: from boys, from friends, from family members, I need to know that my existence matters at all times or else I feel like a tree falling in a forest where no one is around to hear it.

Can you tell how insanely self aware I've had to become? That's why I feel very, very qualified to write this post and give advice to strangers on the internet.

Loneliness can be really, really beautiful and it can also be really, really boring. But, sometimes, peace can be mistaken for boredom. Really, really find it in yourself and see if your boredom really is so bad. It took an insane amount of time for me to make that distinction and stop pushing on my boundaries in order to avoid boredom. My therapist loved watching me stir the pot over and over again just because I was soul-crushingly, devastatingly, mind numbingly alone (roll credits!)

In order to embrace loneliness, I just had to find stuff to do. Did you know there's like, a million things to do every day? I didn't! When I came to this earth-shattering realization, I started to wake up in the morning and leave my bed within an hour of waking up to grab a cup of coffee, sit and people watch, read my book, listen to one of the podcast episodes recommended to me by my therapist, and just kind of focus on existing.

There is so much beauty in the world when you allow yourself to experience it all by yourself, without needing to be "on" for the people around you.

It's a lot of work to exist! Take the time to be bored and lonely simply because existing is exhausting, and it's even more exhausting when you have to exert energy into existing. That is exactly why embracing loneliness can be so, so insanely healing. You're basically just giving your entire body a break from all the work it takes to get through life.

Redefine for yourself what loneliness is. For me, it's like swimming up to the surface for air. For you, it might be a break from the exhaustion of existence. Take that definition, hold it near and dear, and remind yourself that this hard work is healing. It'll heal the part of you that hates looking in the mirror most days. It'll heal your most recent heartbreak, because I firmly do not believe that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. Teach yourself to be alone so the recoil after a breakup isn't nearly as devastating.

I guess this didn't really tell you how to be alone and more about why it's important to be alone. I hope I helped you, nonetheless (I have never used that word before and I don't think I'll ever use it again.)

If you're wondering, yes, I started this website purely because I needed something to do when I was all alone. And, yes, it's been working wonders.

Love always,

Maya