Forever Alone

We are officially back to school, and I am leaving the bubble from my summer. I spent a lot of time alone and in reflection, and I am grateful for my ability to contently spend time with myself. However, it has been very lovely to be in company with people again.

Friday night, my friends, who happen to be my colleagues, were assigned to the movie night, and I went to hang out by the popcorn machine and chat. I was not required to be there, yet I was longing for people to talk to. The same thing happened Monday night. I was returning from dinner duty with my fellow dorm parent, and I kept procrastinating going into my apartment. I jokingly (but it's not actually a joke) said that I spend so much time alone that sometimes I just want to stand around and talk to people, and I feel like, at times, the only way that I have friends is when they are held hostage at work, and I am able to come and join them when I am not required to be there.

I've been thinking about this since I said it, and I have always been like this. In high school and college, I had friends who worked at two different Kroger locations and, on many occasions, chose to visit them and spend time with them while they were doing their jobs. I would collect carts or return items alongside of them because I didn't have anywhere to be, but I wanted to be with my people.

This is also who I was in Port Huron. When I had my free period, which for two years was during the lunch block, meaning I had access to people during all three lunches, I would seek out my friends during their lunch times. I would also wander into the classroom of my closest friend because our preps were during the same time. That behavior was never reciprocated.

Maybe this is because I don't allow for people to have free entry into my spaces. Poor Jon tried during our co-teaching year, but the whole time I would be concerned that he was judging me or needing something from me, so he quickly found a new space to spend our prep time.

What I want to write based on that example feels a little sad, so I keep rewriting it, trying to find something more palatable. I guess, what I want to express is that it's hard for me to exist with other people, without being mentally prepared for how I get to show up. Maybe I like to have control of the situation, so I know the turf and can be that version of myself. Maybe I am trying to protect myself from the judgement of allowing someone to see me in my imperfection when they are seeing me at my most real and vulnerable self.

This accidentally got even more personal than what I originally intended to go with this post because I didn't realize I was going to stumble upon a deep realization about how I connect with people. Oops. That's saying something because I was originally intending for this to be a very personal post.

Anyways, in the staff room today, I was discussing with colleagues that I want to have a person outside of my job this year. Everyone immediately talked about how they too don't have a life outside of our job or how they wished they had more alone time. I pointed out that a lot of them have a spouse and children, so they have another facet to their life that has connection in it, whereas I spend all of my time by myself if not at work. I emphasized that I love being alone and being in my company, but when you do it too often, it can lose its fun and become isolating.

Something came up about joining them at the gym, and I shared that I consistently do that. I have hobbies, such as my monthly book club, my euchre group, and my volleyball team, so I know people who I don't work with, but they aren't my friends. I don't talk to them about my life in real and meaningful ways. There is value in it, but it's not the same as having connections with people.

Please don't get me wrong. My life is very full, and I love being single. I enjoy spending time on my own, and I find it really enjoyable. I think I am funny, and I challenge myself, and I like that I get to choose my life without impacting anyone or having them impact me.

HOWEVER, it can be very exhausting to be your person. When everyone around you has a person (or people), it can feel very lonely. My friends have children or partners, and it can feel burdensome to offload onto them. At times it can feel like an inconvenience or interruption. It doesn't feel fair to ask for someone's time when they have a family to tend to and only so many hours in a day and so much emotional capacity. It feels very selfish to impose.

That means that if I have a bad day, there's no one waiting for me to console me or share the weight of it. There's no one there to celebrate the wins or share the responsibilities that come with life. I have to decide what feels like it's worth sharing with someone else because I don't want to take too much. It means that I carry life by myself.

Again, don't get me wrong. I have seen my share of unhappy partnerships and unequal mental distribution of household responsibilities, and I know that it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I am not naïve enough to think that partnerships equal happiness, and I think that there are a lot of studies that show that unmarried women live longer and happier lives when compared to married women. (The opposite statistic is true of men.)

I am writing all of this, not as a plea for connection or for you to be concerned about me. This is one of those feelings that comes out of nowhere, and I experience it, and then I go on to finding the overwhelmingly good parts of being a single person living on my own.

It can be incredibly beautiful to lean into living a life you love, and it can also be terribly lonely when you are always doing everything on your own.