On Loneliness

I read a quote the other day that said:

 “If you have the power to eat alone in a restaurant or sit alone in a cinema, then you can do anything in your life.”

I used to be terrified of being alone. I remember there was an old “The Onion” skit about a suicide prevention tipline on Stouffer’s frozen meal boxes, which at the time was funny but also played on my fears of being alone… like those awkward laughs you have because it’s funny but holds an uncomfortable truth inside you (both from my brushes with suicidal ideation and fear of being all alone). The mere sight of an older woman eating alone at a table would send me into an existential tailspin. Loneliness was a death sentence to me. I’d begin to suffocate under the weight of the self-imposed anxiety noose I fastened for myself out of the fears of abandonment and being unworthy. “She must be lonely,” “she must not be worthy of being chosen,” “what if I end up that way at 50? All alone? I would become insignificant.” I created a false narrative of this woman and how she must view her life. She must be miserable. She must be depressed. She must be unlovable. I could not imagine going to a restaurant or the movies or on vacation all alone. What would others think?! And that made me realize that part of my fear of loneliness had everything to do with my perceived value as a person.

My value and worthiness, measured by an imagined audience I had created in my head, just like I created how this stranger should feel about her life. Wisdom now tells me that if I simply just asked her about how she felt about her life, chances are she probably feels just fucking fine.

Conversely, I learned that it’s better to be alone than to be with people who make you feel alone. I know I’m not telling you things that are really earth-shattering here… we all know this deep down… but it took me a long time to be satisfied with being alone, which has been my deepest fear.

I look back on some of my past relationships, and it pains me to remember the times in which I had bids for connection rejected, or where I wanted to feel together but was left alone. Physically being present with someone, but not emotionally connected. I know I’m guilty of this too, and I think we all are to some degree as we are lured into our phones and other vices of life. In working to take my past relationships off the pedestals I placed them on, I had to remember the times where I felt alone when I was still with someone: the rejected bids for physical intimacy, the vacations I wanted to take but the other partner didn’t want to go…

Remembering my birthday last year when I had to buy all of the ingredients for my own cake…

Remembering last Valentine’s Day when I put in so much effort for cards, flowers, and treats, to not get anything in return… hell, ALL my Valentine’s Days have been this way for my entire existence. I’m conditioned to believe they never will be special unless I put in all the effort. Same with anniversaries.

Being alone while together is worse than being alone by yourself. Period.

I lived a life lacking reciprocity. It’s the number one thing that I look for now in relationships and the quickest way to lock me down. It’s a non-negotiable for me now.

It’s important to note that I took those inventories not to take score or to stain those relationships, but to humanize them (and me) as well as reinforce the idea in myself that I CAN make it through being alone. Understanding that I can truly be alone, and the strength that comes from it, is the biggest flex one can ever have.

I hesitate to give this story, as I do not wish to slam my ex-husband, but it was a critical point in my life where I realized how powerful I am alone. When he and I both worked at Virgin Galactic, they gave us our marching orders to move to New Mexico from our established home in California. We weren’t sure the program was going to work, or whether uprooting whole lives to live in Las Cruces where our industry was limited was a smart idea. In Southern California, if a company folded, we could always jump to another aerospace entity… You had so many to choose from (Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, the Air Force, etc). Still, this was my dream career, and I thought it was his too, until he jumped ship and immediately got a job back at his previous company. I can’t blame him now for having reservations, but it put me in a hard spot: choose between my career I worked SO FUCKING HARD to climb to the top of or stay in this shithole town I hated so much at a company that had no meaning to me. Leave all my friends/coworkers behind that I’ve bonded with. So I packed up my RV and limited belongings to drive to Las Cruces, dodging all the awkward questions about where he was going and what we were going to do living states apart. The final nail in the coffin was that my dad had to drive me and the RV to Las Cruces; my husband didn’t. The loneliness inside me had boiled into a rage. Those 3 months I lived in an RV in New Mexico all but eradicated the fear I had of being alone. I was alone, while together.

Again, I say this only for the sake of the story and not to criticize him. I did my own fair share of making him feel alone while we were together, too.

Before that whole RV journey, I had tasted what life would be like as that middle-aged woman sitting at a table alone. I started traveling a lot for work and found myself forced to eat alone because I had no other choice. I’d go watch movies alone in the theatre down the street from the Hotel Encanto when I flew into Las Cruces. I remember watching “A Star Is Born” in a completely empty theatre… just me and one of those super long licorice ropes… it was peaceful. And before all of that, I had started to take vacations alone since my ex never wanted to go. I flew to Virginia to see my friends Mike and Courtney get married, and I wandered all around the area as a solo traveler. Visited battlefields, watched two movies in the theatre alone, back to back (cause fuck it, why not?). Slowly, it gave me confidence that I can be comfortable as a single entity.

Then, of course, I moved to Houston all alone, without knowing anybody, and look at the life I’ve built all alone! This home I bought by myself… everything under this roof is due to me. I built this life all by myself.

Last year, during the Hill Country Floods, my loneliness was truly tested. Every night we’d return to our housing after sifting through rubble or working to solve logistics issues or dealing with the onslaught of media… and I’d see my teammates call home to their wives. And the loneliness crept in. My ex-girlfriend used to check in with me during my searches. One time, I came home after a long day on the water and she had made me a giant skillet of homemade nachos… and I fell in love with her for that (because nobody had ever cared for me in that way… not the nachos themselves despite those being BOMB… it wasn’t about the nachos). But every morning and every night, I woke up with no good morning or good night texts like I had grown so accustomed to. Like she was dead while still alive somewhere, living her life. She, my best friend, was gone, and in her absence during one of the most pivotal moments of my life, resentment spawned like the infection of the heart that it is. That’s when I truly knocked her off the pedestal I placed her on. I won’t lie and say I magically healed my resentment towards her… that I’m some bigger person about it all… although I’ve allowed empathy in my heart towards her, resentment coexists there too (which is a weird purgatory for my heart to be in).

But what I learned through that experience is that I wasn’t truly alone. I had friends and colleagues who had my back. Even though my need for connection and love was depleted, I was able to fulfill those needs within myself, and that was a transformative experience. It made me realize that there’s power in loneliness… that if you are in my life, I have you here INTENTIONALLY. You are here BY MY CHOICE. Not to fill a void, because I have filled those within myself, but because I cherish you. Because I think you deserve to sit at my table.

Like the middle-aged woman sitting alone at the table, I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. This is a source of power for me. I spent my entire Thanksgiving alone last year, which was terrifying at first, but I found it relaxing. Made my own dinner for myself and watched a Packers game while I bonded with my puppy… didn’t have to have my social battery drained either. It was great! This Christmas was the first Christmas I spent single since I was 17 years old. That’s 20 fucking years! I saved so much money on presents haha.

Last year, I hiked alone, camped alone, SLEPT ON A FREAKIN ISLAND ALONE, vacationed alone, cried alone, danced alone, laughed alone, rejoiced alone… in the company of myself. Laughing at my own jokes and marching to the beat of my own drum. Some may think I’m just acting “extra” or being a “pick me” girl, but really, it’s because I don’t give a fuck. I stopped shrinking myself to make others happy a long time ago. I’m just a big goofball who feels so much, and I love that about me.

Do I get lonely? Absolutely. I love people despite my finding them draining at times. But my life is so precious, and I am very picky about who I share it with. It’s my most prized possession.

I learned not to accept crumbs from people to stave off the hunger of loneliness. I’ve grown so comfortable with being alone and accepting of who I am as a person that I can go long periods of time without feeding off the connection people give me. The analogy I think of is that I’ve grown so accustomed to the internal hunger cues that I don’t ravenously reach for any little Skittle someone gives me… I wait for the whole meal… and I can wait a long… fucking… time for those who have the capacity to deliver on that.

Even if that means that I am now that middle-aged woman sitting at the table alone.