"I like drinking tea alone,
and reading alone.
I like riding the train alone,
and walking home alone.
It gives me time to think,
and set my mind free.
I like eating alone,
and listening to music alone.
But when I see a mother
with her child,
a girl
with her lover,
or a friend laughing
with their best friend,
I realize that even though
I like being alone,
I don't fancy being lonely."
- Kaylee Friend
When I was growing up, I spent quite a bit of time alone because I was the youngest in my family by a lot and I didn't have many kids my age in my neighborhood. I like to think that that time alone led to my overactive imagination and creativity. I would just sit in my room and think of endless songs and stories.
But, as I grew up, I started to make more friends my own age and started to almost develop this dependence on other people. I'm not proud of it, but I felt like I just had to be around people. Sure, I would get my alone time in my car when I drove around. I would scream, sing loudly, or just talk randomly to the other people on the road. But, most of my day usually involved being around other people and I felt weird if I didn't get that time.
As life goes on, people come and people go. Some people walk out of your life and you find yourself wondering what you're supposed to do now. I found myself in this place recently, and I had to take a look at myself in the mirror and really reevaluate who I was and what was important to me in life. I realized something. I put so much effort into my relationships with others that I hadn't made friends with myself. I realized that I had to love myself, but love always starts with a friendship.
When you are first starting a friendship, you go and do things together and make memories and start to build a foundation. In my quest to make friends with myself, I started to face my fear of loneliness. I would do simple things by myself instead of asking someone to go with me. At first, it was weird. Going to get food by yourself and sitting there and eating without talking to someone else felt foreign to me. But, slowly I'm getting used to being comfortable without someone else there.
Another area of the friendship with myself that I really struggled with was the way I would talk to/think about myself. I'd never dream of being half as rude to my friends as I am to myself. I have to try and change the way I think about myself, and to be honest, it's not easy. There are days where I can see nothing good in myself, and then I have to take a step back and remember that there is never just all bad in a person, even me. It's alright to be frustrated sometimes, but you have to remember to be patient with your friends as they're growing and learning.
Loneliness is still a fear of mine, but I'm trying hard to fight it everyday to learn to love myself. Though there are things I still have to work through, I am making my way and I'm proud of the progress I've made in becoming my own best friend.
