I have lived alone since 2018. When people hear that, they usually ask one of two questions. “Don’t you get scared?” or “Don’t you get bored?”
The honest answer to both is: sometimes. But that is not the whole story. Living alone is not one feeling. It is many feelings that take turns.
The silence is loud before it is peaceful
In the beginning, the quiet after a long day feels like it is waiting for someone to fill it. You switch on the TV for company. You call someone just to hear a voice. Slowly, the silence changes. It stops being empty and starts being yours.
You meet yourself without an audience
When nobody is watching, you find out what you actually like. How you take your tea when no one is judging. What music you play when you are sad. Which habits are really yours and which ones you only performed for others.
You become your own emergency contact
The fever at 2 am. The geyser that stops working. The bad news that arrives on a Sunday night. Living alone teaches you to take care of yourself before you are rescued. It also teaches you, eventually, that asking for help is not a weakness.
Loneliness and aloneness are not the same
Aloneness is a situation. Loneliness is a feeling. I have felt lonely in crowded rooms and completely at peace in an empty flat. The difference is whether you feel connected, not whether people are physically near.
Rituals become your roommates
A morning routine, a Sunday clean-up, a playlist for cooking. These small rituals hold your days together when there is nobody else to hold them with.
Living alone did not make me cold or closed off. If anything, it made me more careful about the people I let in, because I know what my own company feels like. Anyone who enters now has to add to that peace, not disturb it.
So no, I am not lonely. I am simply living with someone I am still getting to know.
Me.
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Featured image: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
