Regardless of whether you're a social butterfly or a wallflower, the feeling of emptiness we associate with being truly alone is universal. Accepting loneliness has become a marker of maturity in some ways, as it indicates a level of comfort with oneself, and only oneself. That is, society seems to place a high value on the ability to be secure with oneself despite a lack of external validation. So is loneliness a good thing, or just a thing we must all accept at one point or another?
When I moved into my very small, one bedroom apartment in August of last year, I had many preconceived notions about what my life living alone would be like. I was optimistic about many elements of the coming year, but being constantly by myself wasn't necessarily one of them. With no roommate, I knew that there would be no one to motivate me to get out, and this would be entirely up to me. I had always had extremely extroverted friends who helped me balance this. They were all be gone, however, at different colleges across the country, and would not be returning until much later that year.
Routine quickly filled the gap that was left by my closest friends. I worked an internship during the weekdays, a part-time job on the weekends, and most of the free nights I had I spent in the cold embrace of Netflix. I found a few other things to fill my time (mostly writing music and reading), but I was acutely aware that my social anxiety was holding me back from going out and making new friends. It wasn't as if the odds were particularly stacked in my favor. It is very difficult for a nineteen-year-old to make friends outside of an educational institution. I quickly became close with all my colleagues at both of my places of work but found it difficult to deepen those friendships, as I worked with people who were often four to five years older than me.
As the year went on I found myself going through different phases of loneliness. Optimism about my situation slowly melted away leaving a sense of despair. I turned to my one of my cousins, several years older than me, who I thought might be able to provide a solution. I asked how I was supposed to make friends when I couldn't meet people at bars or even really hang with those friends I had made at work. He told me something that changed my perspective entirely. He said that he was a fully grown adult and he didn't even really know how to make friends.
"What you're doing right now is so important. Learning to become comfortable while by yourself is part of being an adult and if you can start that now you're going to be much better off down the road."
In truth, I was extremely skeptical about this advice. I couldn't understand what was so important about "learning" how to be lonely. I was already lonely- what was there to learn? It took months for what he said to actually sink in. Throughout that year, I had been berating myself for not being more social, or at least not putting enough effort into it. I had completely discounted all the progress I had been making. I had acquired a marketable skill set during my 8-month internship for a local non-profit. I had, for the first time in my life, been contributing to my own cost of living (for which I'm sure my parents were grateful). I had even written several songs which I was actually pretty proud of- something that had always been a struggle given the standards I held myself to.
I had been so focused on whether or not I was making friends that I forgot to be proud of the things I was able to do for myself and others.
In the following months, I dove headfirst into my work. I dedicated everything I could to my own personal development. By the time my internship with the non-profit ended, I had gone from helping out in menial ways to actively contributing to the growth of something so much bigger than myself. Somewhere along the way people had begun to put a lot of trust in me and I relished in my own ability to not let them down. I was able to see the impact I was having on other people's lives and it changed the way I looked at my own.
At some point, I had stopped hating myself for spending a good amount of my free time alone. The free time I did have became more of a breather for me, as all my energy was lovingly devoted to something I could never have imagined I would grow to care so much about. I stopped laying in bed at night wondering if a gap year was a mistake. Nothing that led me to make others' lives that much better could ever be considered a mistake.
This past week some of my best friends returned home from their first year away at college. One of the first things they remarked on was how much I had changed over the year. They said I seemed like a much more focused and happy person than the kid they knew from high school. They are right. I firmly believe that we are only able to witness our progress in hindsight. In the moment, we may feel like we have accomplished nothing, but a quick glance back always reminds us of how far we've come.
