How to be Alone

By Marissa Fee

I know what you’re thinking, why would I want to be alone? Isn’t being alone a bad thing? Ask yourself how often you find yourself sitting in your room all day. Maybe you are waiting for your friends to ask you to hang out or someone to find you a match. Why would you wait for something like that when you have the one thing you can rely on, yourself? 

We tend to believe that if we wait and wait and wait we will find the thing that makes us feel less lonely. I recently have come to the realization that being lonely and being alone is not the same thing. Being lonely is the negative feeling of not having company, and being alone is being at peace with being by yourself. 

With technology, humans have become so reliant on the internet to talk to people. We have created wants like fast replies and specific traits to these people. With this easy accessibility to talk to anybody and everybody, it can make it very hard to be alone and even learn to love yourself. We spend hours upon hours comparing ourselves to strangers on the internet who we will never meet. People with extremely different lifestyles than us set extreme standards of not only ourselves but also the people we surround ourselves with. 

The more you learn to love yourself, the more you learn to love others. Self-love can take a long time, depending on how open-minded you let yourself be and if you are willing to put in the effort. 

 An exercise you can try is attempting to go on a date with yourself. Not with your partner, or sibling, or best friend, but yourself. In society, we have normalized not being able to go out alone without having a sense of embarrassment or anxiety. The feeling of needing someone with you lingers in our minds. So if you feel like getting out of your comfort zone, do it, go on a date with yourself. There are many different things you can do: Go to a cafe, bowling, the movies, film a vlog, go on a walk, museums, aquariums, go out to eat, explore a bookstore; the possibilities are endless! 

Don’t be embarrassed or anxious. I know you are thinking everyone is wondering what you are doing by yourself, but in reality, they don’t care. They're doing their own thing, and you are doing yours, so just have fun! Allow yourself to appreciate and love yourself through these dates and your everyday life. Don’t forget, self-love is the best love.