As an only child, it’s assumed that you grow up used to doing things by yourself. You play by yourself as an infant, you meet friends by yourself as a teen and run errands alone as a young adult. Although infinitely lucky to have had two best friends handed to me for as long as I can remember, I have rarely had to do anything alone.
It was on one morning at the very end of many of my best friend’s winter break that I found myself craving a big breakfast without a free friend or an unoccupied parent in sight. I sat in bed weighing my options. I could make breakfast at home (not a real option, because I don’t cook) or I could go get breakfast by myself.
My need for prepared food outweighed the discomfort I felt in going out to eat alone.
After enduring the process of saying “just one” to the hostess I settled in a booth, out in the open, in a very crowded dining room. My first instinct was to text every group chat I have in my messages to avoid eye contact with the many couples of people sitting among the restaurant. It took barely noticing the waitress asking for my order to make me realize I wasn’t sitting alone at all. I was sitting with 8 different people that were nowhere in the restaurant. I wasn’t really alone at all, I was engrossed in my group chats.
As I put my phone down I thought about why eating alone is so hard for us. What is it about being alone that scares us all so much? Is it the perceived sympathetic judgment of others or our own unwillingness to be alone with our thoughts?
With my phone on the table and coffee in hand, I started to really appreciate the day. It was one of those deceiving windy cold days, that looks almost pleasant from the comfort of inside. I looked longer than was appropriate at the couples that surrounded me. People watching should really be a sport. The more I sat there alone and watched the couples, the more I realized how little they really cared about me. The judgment I felt was my own.
Without my phone or anyone else to talk to I noticed things I otherwise would have ignored. I heard the Beatles playing softly throughout the restaurant, the laughter in the booth behind me, the dinging of the front door opening. Not to mention actually eating without distraction. Full attention to what truly mattered… the food.
I have spent plenty a meal with other people that would’ve been much better spent alone either in a restaurant or in my pajamas in bed. We can spend our days surrounded by people and really be alone anyway.
The presence of another person doesn’t equate company and it doesn’t equate happiness. Instead of filling my meal with Instagram updates and mindless gossip, I spent it with myself.
I was happy, full and alone.
