A Missive on Being Alone
I’ve lived alone for the past four years of my life (if you don’t count much of the early pandemic, when the man I was dating essentially moved himself into my apartment with his little dog. God I loved that dog). I find it to be a necessity. In college, I learned quickly that I was not an ideal roommate, and also that I had a tendency to pick even worse roommates. There was the girl who needed absolute quiet at all times and said I watched TV in our living room too loud, who also once barged into my room after I’d left to kick out a boy. There were the three roommates who confronted me in a group message, saying my boyfriend had been at our house too much, so they were charging him for a portion of the rent and utilities. One of their boyfriends later essentially moved in; the other got into screaming match after screaming match with her boyfriend at 1:00 in the morning after they’d come home from the bars. These roommates also left knives blade up in the drying rack (I still have a little scar), told me that I had to turn off my ceiling fan because our electric bill was too high, and once barged in on me in the bathtub and began screaming that I was drowning because I had my head leaned back and my eyes closed.
Naturally, I decided, “Fuck this shit,” because nothing makes my blood boil more than minor inconveniences. In the summer of 2018, I moved into an apartment by myself, and I have never looked back. Mostly.
I don’t bother much with the “introvert, extrovert” label. I find it to be too simplistic, and that when people use these words, no one really has a good understanding of what they mean. I find myself to be a pretty social person. I like talking to people, and my friend Meredith describes me as someone “who likes to be seen.” And I would agree. And yet, here I find myself, with a homemaking newsletter. Funny, right?
For me, my home is supposed to be the place where I can feel comfortable, where I can relax and feel at peace after whatever the day has brought to my doorstep. I find I can’t do that with roommates. Or rather, after a couple of not so great experiences where I found myself dreading going home, I didn’t trust anyone else to share space with me. This is as much my “fault” as it is anyone else’s. I think I have a deep-seated fear of someone seeing me at my most vulnerable, with my neuroses on full display. I leave clothes scattered. I dominate the kitchen. Sometimes I buy too much produce and almost all of it wilts and rots in the fridge. I have loose paper floating everywhere. I don’t clean the bathroom as much as I should. I like to bring people home rather than going home with them. I leave necessary household tasks until absolutely the last minute. I talk to myself, sometimes in the third person. In a recent conversation with a friend, I said without irony, “I’ve thought about communal living, but I like my own stuff too much. Also I bet everyone would have terrible taste, and I just couldn’t live with that.” I want to be able to rest in my home in the way that makes me comfortable without dominating someone else’s space, without souring the relationship between myself and another person.
Perhaps I’m just not meant to live with others.
In recent weeks, as I enter my third month of living in Belhaven, and as the bills really begin to roll in, this frame of thinking has been weighing on me. My house is so big. There is so much of it to clean. The rent, the internet, the electricity, groceries, it would all be so much more manageable if I could split it with someone, if sometimes someone else could cook and I could clean up after them. I would have money for travel, for the gin I want to buy to learn how to make martinis. And I would have someone with whom I could drink martinis.
As I said earlier, I would describe myself as a pretty social person. I think other people would too. Which is why I think it would surprise most people to find that I have always spent most of my time “alone”, in some sense of the word.
Since college at least, perhaps even before, I’ve been a bit of a lone wolf. I always pushed towards things that interested me, regardless of whether or not I would have anyone to participate with. I never had a friend group of any sort, instead floating on the fringes of several. I’m not always a great person to go out with, because at some point in the evening I will try to wander off to find some time to myself (or to make out with someone).
I go to bars alone, to dinner and to the movies. I plan long trips alone because I don’t like being restricted by anyone’s schedule but my own. I’m afraid to ask friends in other cities if I can stay with them because I’m worried, not only about imposing, but that I will hurt them when I want to wander the city by myself for a moment.
I don’t know how good it is for me, spending this much time in my own head. You think if I were alone this much, I’d be better at responding to my friends text messages, at scheduling phone calls to catch up, at getting my writing done that necessitates privacy and time. But that’s not really the case.
This is a long way, I think, of saying that I’ve been lonely. Lonely and spread thin when it comes to money. I’ve been thinking about what I really want to value, what is most important to me, and if the sanctity of my space can only be preserved if it is just mine alone. If it’s worth it to pay this much for the privilege of living alone, if it is really making me happy, if living with other people would really make me unhappy.
I don’t really have an answer, and I don’t think it would matter if I did. What’s important, I think, is being able to ask the question.