Better off Alone

I am the love of my life

Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash

Yesterday, I sat on the Gulf Shores and watched these gentle little baby waves almost daintily approach the beach, and there was this single moment when there was this slight tinkling noise, almost like bells, as the waves pulled all of these little tiny shells back with them.

I was sitting on the beach, as I have done, for the past two days. Just watching the ocean. Just taking in the smell and the breeze and the healing powers of water.

And before the magnificent sunset, I noticed—

To my right was a large African-American family (I say their race because of the often communal culture of togetherness and family), and they had many kiddos and a granny with them, jovial and loud and bustling in their sense of community.

One teenager wore a t-shirt that read, “Better Off Alone.”

It gave me pause.

I found it ironic that this kiddo, enshrouded in the company and the love of his family, wore this shirt. I wondered why.

I wanted to know what “alone” meant to him…as he was surrounded by people.

I wondered…as I sat there, alone on Thanksgiving weekend. My entire nuclear family dead.

Now, I get that a teenager in that situation could glamorize solitude and alone time. Is that why he wore the shirt?

Maybe it was in reference to a relationship gone bad? A friend or group of friends that betrayed him or led him astray?

An introvert in a large family of extroverts?

I thought a lot about his story. And his reason to wear that shirt.

I also wondered—how many of us glamorize being alone because we don’t know what it is to really be alone? To really feel alone?

I have oodles of alone time. I often times feel alone.

And it has challenged me, partly why I took this trip.

I often times feel that I would have done better in a large extended family—that wasn’t so dysfunctional—a family where we were the type to take pictures together on a beach on a holiday weekend. (We were not).

Though I have friends and people who assure me that I am not really ever alone, and I appreciate that, with no family, but—truly, on the other hand—

To be alone is somewhat of the human condition, is it not?

We come into the world our own separate entity, alone, now separate from our mothers, and we leave alone, often without those most important to us, our beloveds, who are either still here or have already walked on….and so, we pretty much do this all this, this whole thing alone.

We are our own constant.

A facebook friend recently posed the question to us all—when did you realize that you were the great love of your life?

2023, I wrote.

This year. This year I learned I am the great love of my life.

I not only have to be, but I have come to realize that not everyone loves and gives and feels as deeply as I do.

That has come with great pain, but reworked and reframed, it also means this—if no one loves does that like I do, then all I need is to realize that I am my own greatest love and oh-so very worth it.

I’ve spent years like my mother pouring it out into other people and not just relationships, but friendships and other people too. Undoubtedly why I became a professor, to pour into my students as well.

It is now, finally, at the age of forty, though, time for me to bask in the tender loving care that I have enveloped others into for oh so long.

I think this is often the journey of women and other individuals in marginalized groups—queer and nonbinary and trans folks.

Cis men—with the patriarchy and how we raise little boys—seem to figure this out much, much sooner. What’s more, they’re raised this way. (A generalization, for sure, and there are exceptions, but largely true.)

They often times know and are raised with the idea that they are their own best thing. That comes with loneliness for them, indeed, but also a more inherent sense of—it’s about me.

Anyways, so in the pursuit of self-love and growth, I have decided my next solo trip will be one abroad. Where I need to navigate a culture that is not mine, and all alone.I have traveled alone abroad, but it is to meet others in India or go to a cousin’s home, but this time, I will do it all alone. I know that I will be challenged and I will learn—about myself and about people.

It perhaps the greatest work of my life, as a heavily extroverted woman, to practice solitude and grow comfortable sitting in and just being with it.

I consider that to be “Alone” is interesting, because it is so largely subjective.

For someone like me, I often read it (alone) as synonymous with lonely, though it is not, but I often am/have been. For others, “alone” is oh-such-sweet music to their ears, those who are heavily introverted in a world where they must socialize, or others who are dripping with small children who chatter incessantly, or those who are surrounded by large families.

Though I know that solitude can be positive. And though it has greatly challenged me, I also truly believe that women should be able to live alone and be solvent, even if they don’t prefer it. They have to know how to do it and know that they can rely on themselves when they need to do so.

Then they don’t fall prey to the wrong type of men and relationships.

I am not only just being alone, but I am starting to relish my solitude. And growing less tolerant of those who disrupt the peace that this, my beautiful solitude, affords.

And so, I will continue on with this, my greatest love story…with myself.