How To Be Alone

on learning how to be by myself

I’m still digging through the rubble of a breakup that happened in January. On the one hand, I can tell myself, it’s only been six months, but the other hand is pointing at me and saying, it’s been six months already, move on. I’ve found a lot of things strewn around in the rubble, not the least of which is a profound loneliness that I don’t know how to get over and I don’t know whether to coddle myself or admonish myself.

It’s been almost a week since I’ve talked to him so I texted him today about an inconsequential piece of mail that came to the house. I could have easily dropped it into another envelope and mailed it off to his new address, but I looked at that mail as an opportunity to contact him, to touch base, to make small talk. Anything to make me feel like I’m not alone. The conversation was brief and he asked me to leave the envelope in the mailbox and he’d drive by and pick it up. There was no mention of stopping in to say hi. There was just an “ok” on my part and then silence. I was alone again.

I’ve tried to find things to fill the hole in my life. I’m reading and watching tv shows and spending time with my family. I’m doing crossword puzzles and watching sports and seeing friends. But none of that has done anything to quell the emptiness that permeates my life right now and I wonder if I just have to learn to live with it, or let it run its course rather than trying too hard to conquer it.

Everyone tells me things will get better. Things will get easier. I don’t ask them when this will happen, I just nod and hope for the best. Each day I wake up I hope this is the day when I turn it around, when the loneliness dissipates, when the emptiness feels less acute. I listen as people tell me how strong I am and sometimes I want to tell them, I’m not strong, I’m just faking it. I want to be weak, I want to fall apart, I want to curl up in a ball and cry my heart out for hours. But life does not allow me that breakdown I want so much; I need to go to work and maintain my house and tend to bills. I need to live, and what I want very much to do is escape life.

There are ways to be alone, to be comfortable with just yourself, in your own little world. I have bouts of doing just that. There are some nights when I’m on my couch, my dog next to me, maybe an episode of Ted Lasso on the screen, and I feel good. I feel like everything is in its right place. I am making the house my own instead of letting it linger as a museum to what once was. But then something will trigger the heartbreak that lies just underneath - a song, a glance at the pictures he hung, a stray memory coming out of nowhere - and I’ll be back where I started, in that ugly place where I’m unseen, unloved, worth nothing without him.

I want to find myself again. I want to go back to the place where I was happy and content and laughed all the time. And I do feel all that when I’m out, when I’m with family or friends, but I want to be able to feel that while alone as well. That’s the key to my recovery here, to be able to live happily with myself, to be able to be alone and like it, be comfortable. To be alone, but not feel lonely.

I want to learn how to be alone. Because that’s essentially what I am now. I am no longer a couple, no longer one of two. I can text him all I want, have those small conversations that keep me from feeling empty, but the truth is those conversations only serve to prolong my recovery. I’m clinging to something that’s elastic and is going to give way soon.

Alone means many things to different people. For some, it’s a balm, a salve, a way to save themselves from the demands other people put on them. For some, it’s agony. I want to be somewhere in between. I want to reach a place where I look forward to my nights on the couch, to having the bed to myself, to finding joy in doing things just for me, but where I still acknowledge my hurt and sadness. Perhaps in time that will come. That time is not yet, and that’s okay.