"Are you going alone?"
I get asked this a lot.
And the adamant feminist sometimes [internally] retorts: I wonder if single, childless men get asked this as often as I do.
Yes, I’m fucking going alone.
I like being alone a lot more than I ever used to.
Next week is our break, so I am going to make a trip to New Orleans for my spring break. I’m going to be hopping on a plane to go to Spokane, Washington and Denver, Colorado, (by myself, yes) over the next couple of months, for conferences. So, I have decided I wouldn’t hop on a plane again for this trip. Instead, I’m going to drive down to New Orleans so I can drive about down there. I also get the enjoyment of the road trip with my cost efficient hybrid. :)
I want to experience the French quarters, the live music and culture, visit the Hurricane Katrina Museum, and feast on some beignets from Cafe Monde and make my eyes water with some spicy gumbo and jambalaya.
But, when I tell people that I’m going, they want to know if I’m going with someone.
I think a lot about this phrase: “with someone” these days.
And I realize that—I’m no longer going alone, I’m going with myself. And that important distinction, it makes all the difference.
I do things alone now. I did before as well, certainly. But I enjoy them now.
I have learned how, to be alone, to go alone, to relish my own alone time (that sturmfre), the solitude.
And it’s all because being with myself, finally, is a peaceful place to be.
I thought about this today as I shared with my therapist that I [happily] spend more and more time alone these days. More than I ever thought I would, voluntarily, with such quiet pleasure.
I also realize that in having a stronger self-attachment, I rely on others less for affirming me.
She wanted to know if when others compliment me or affirm me how I feel then, as the people-pleasing, hero, that role of the child of the alcoholic.
I paused, smiled and said, It isn’t my life-line anymore. I believe I said that it doesn’t feel like the safety vest, the life line, that it once did. Validating me.
I realize I don’t crave it, need it for my survival and my existence any longer.
I validate and affirm myself.
Moving through the world this way makes me feel…bolder, stronger, empowered.
There were moments that I used to dread going home to my apartment, at the start of a weekend, I’d feel lonely and purposeless, not going home to anyone, no partner or children.
Now, I feel free. I ask myself what I want to do, and then I just..do it.
Sometimes it’s getting my jammies and reading, or going to a movie, or driving to Nashville to watch a comedy show and walk along honky tonk highway.
It sounds so simple. So stupidly simple, that it’s almost shameful for me to admit, to write.
And yet, as an extrovert, with a heightened, out-of-whack parasympathetic nervous system, a PTSD addled brain, with childhood wounds and an anxious attachment style, who saw co-dependency modeled, and someone traumatized and who felt abandoned, this isn’t a small thing.
Sure, I could be alone. But I would fill it with things that I felt I ought to do—work or I would constantly call friends or go on dates that bored me to tears, engaging in conversations with men on dating apps that—quite frankly—were just a gigantic waste of my time. (But it gave me someone to talk to…)
Or I would nurse a bottle of wine,
Or, when healthier, I would read.
All of the above made it so I could escape my reality, my body, get into my head. Or temporarily escape.
This is the biggest difference, I now realize, from then to the secure attachment that I am now developing with myself. My settled mind, my calmed nervous system, my body relaxes into my dreams, my body eases itself into sleep, better than I have had in years. My mind and body, at peace.
And I never fucking thought this would happen.
I thought that I was determined to have anxiety and depression and PTSD and C-PTSD, that I would always bear those wounds and carry that grief and trauma.
Now, I’m not saying I don’t still have wounds that have scarred over, pink, raw, and tender to the touch, but I also never thought I could feel this way:
So. much. more. calm.
I learned from a very young age to take in my surroundings, to observe carefully, to be intensely hypervigilant. It morphed into some mature social skills and strong emotional intelligence, I navigated conversations well and maturely from a very young age.
But I also lost the ability to go inward and develop my own sense of child, entirely being a kid in my childhood, because I was so busy monitoring my surroundings. Seeing if my father would blow up. Checking that my mother was okay. I was constantly gaging the situation, because I had to do so. For survival. So, I never developed some important self stuff.
I reflect on this because it’s important for me to remember and center the core truth that:
There are reasons why I got here. And why I am the way that I am.
Otherwise, admitting this to you, reader, and to the world-wide web, would be rather shaming.
My therapist tells me, remember: your coping mechanisms served you. They helped you to survive. They got you to this point. But, now, they no longer serve you, as you heal.
Now you can address and deal with the bad habits that you turned to in order to survive and choose to put them down and embrace new ones.
Like my reading incessantly about trauma. Frantically, as though I was trying to solve the problem of my PTSD brain.
Like being uber-busy and productive lifestyle with my academic work.
Like keeping busy busy busy. Because I was scared to be alone and in my body and my mind.
Like dating those who didn’t measure up because then I had someone.
Like nursing a bottle of wine.
I can just…be now.
Be calm.
Be in my body.
Be with myself.
So, yes, I’m fucking going alone.
Alone is finally a good place to be now.