I recently came back home from a long trip. Had a horrible flight coming in, the connections were a mess, it was raining when I landed, it took me forever to get home… But when I got to my apartment, opened the door, and saw that empty living room, fresh bed, and fully loaded kitchen….I thought…there are so many moments where I catch myself thinking how nice it would be to be in a relationship….but I have been in a relationship too, and I have caught myself then, thinking of how awesome it would be to be alone as well. This time I decided to write down these moments, so the next time I get that melancholic drift you sometimes get when living alone, I am reminded why exactly it is that I love this “living alone” life. Not saying the relationship option is not wonderful, but having tried both….these are the things I think about whenever I have doubts about my decision to live alone.
When I come back from a trip
Coming back from a trip is often -for me at least- a capitulating experience. I have grown to count on that “opening the door” moment. This is what I think about when I start my journey back home. Doesn’t matter how long this goes on, how many delays I get, connections I miss, at the end of the day, I will be home. I will be completely detached from anything noisy, stressful, deadline related, etc. I will be in the oasis I call: my place.
When I am sick
I actually don’t like to have people around me when I am sick. I know it’s not like this, but I feel that if they are “taking care” of me, I should also try to interact at some level. It’s the least I can do as a show of gratitude. The positives that their presence does bring, are immediately eroded by the fact that I feel this pressure. It doesn’t matter how many times they would tell me I don’t need to say a word, this “pressure to interact” is not coming from them, it’s mine. In addition to that, when I am sick (bad cold for instance), I am usually quite gnarly, snotty, inflamed, and a long list of unflattering adjectives. This is not per se my favorite moment to socialize. My ears are usually ringing, I have to squint extra hard to see clearly -or at all-, I have the attention span of a crab…it’s just not how I like to be feeling when I am around people.
When I come back from work
My commute back home is unfortunately an annoying one. It’s long, it’s crowded, it’s noisy. It’s at the end of usually a very intense day, and whatever energy I have left, the metro just sucks it away. The thought of going back home after a usual day in the office and having to do a show and tell about how my day went…. Two days a week, I could do it…anything more than that, would not be a happy presentation.
When I need (or want) to work
I have a job I love. It is also a very demanding job. When the job demands, and I have to work at odd hours, some people tend to forget that I allow my job to do this to me, because I happen to love it. This is a very difficult point to explain to people that don’t have that relationship with their careers.
When I didn’t sleep well
It’s not that I am not a morning person, it’s more like the person I am this morning depends on how this person slept last night. If I didn’t, it’s nothing personal, but please just leave me alone. My body will eventually find its balance at some point throughout the day, but I can’t be excusing myself for not being attentive, focused, or even awake after a bad night.
When I am in a transitional period of my life
I think that each generation has had their transitional moments baked in. There is at least one big change through the years though, and that is the frequency and the amount of transitional periods the average person has today in comparison to 100 years ago. We process much more information and have an exponential increase in opportunities in the personal area, career, financial, emotional, spiritual, etc. So it’s no surprise that our generation has to sit down and rethink their next steps more often than the previous generation, or the one before that.
When I want to study, learn, or research
There are moments that I just want to have time to update myself, to learn something new, to acquire new knowledge. And you need a lot of time for this. I feel so blessed that I can dive into any topic, undertake any study, continue it, drop it, start a new one…whatever feels right, I can. That is just one of the loveliest freedoms there are in this life.
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