I recently came across a Huffington Post article entitled “The Stigma of Doing Things Alone” and it stood out to me because I constantly find myself having meals or taking myself to coffee. This article pointed out how others seem to find it sad when people are sitting alone. “Aw, he’s by himself. Maybe we can say hi. No one should have to eat alone. That’s so sad,” but it isn’t sad. What's so wrong about me wanting to sit and have a meal by myself.

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Just like it is perfectly fine to take myself on dates. Recently, I was walking back from doing groceries with a friend and we passed a restaurant where we saw a woman drinking wine alone at a table, my friend commented on the fact that she was alone. I saw it differently; I saw a woman enjoying a glass of wine as she sat out and enjoyed the dinner she must have just treated herself to. There is such a stigma around being alone, people jump right to assuming that you are either antisocial or just don’t have friends and they immediately pity you, with just a physical access of the situation.

I am a firm believer in being able to take ones self out to dinner or to a movie, especially as someone with a social anxiety disorder. You sometimes run into nights where you would rather be alone at a movie because that's where you will find your most peace. In social situations you find yourself pressured to interact and make conversation and it can suddenly become overwhelming and a lot to handle. So feel free to take and treat yourself to a nice dinner, or go see that movie that all of your friends refuse to see. You deserve to enjoy life both with and without friends. The purpose of having friends is for them to hold you up, not push you back down. They shouldn’t judge you for staying in on a Friday night because you’ve had a long week and partying in a frat house is the last thing that you want to do.

Especially in the time we live in, we are constantly being bombarded with information whether it is from the billboards that we see around, or even the little rectangles that we glue our eyes and attention to. So if you were too look at it from a technical standpoint, we are never truly alone. If you consider your online self, you are constantly surrounded by Twitter mentions, Instagram likes, and Facebook pokes. So to the naked eye it may look like we are sitting alone at a coffee shop, but while scrolling through Twitter we are surrounded. My advice, is to take a day to completely unplug yourself from your online self and your real life self. Don’t think about what anyone else thinks. Take yourself out to a nice meal, enjoy the time with your thoughts because that is such a rare time to have these days. We are so surrounded that when we are truly and honestly alone it suddenly feels like the burden of everything we are dealing with has been lifted.

I’ll leave you with this, like Kelly Clarkson in her classic pop ballad said, “Miss Independent, Miss Self-Sufficient, Miss Keep Your Distance, Miss Unafraid.”

Now this can apply to guys and girls, don’t let the lyrics fool you. Be independent, do things for yourself and don’t be afraid of how nice of a feeling it is. We constantly feel like we have to be social for the fear of missing out, but that's just a societal stigma that we have grown up in. By doing things for yourself, you will start to live your best life, I promise.