All By Myself

In elementary school you make new best friends practically every day. You make new friends throughout middle school, and solidify friendships in high school. Then you pack up and leave for college, where everyone is on their own for the first time, and everyone is scared to some degree. This leads to instant bonding. Plus when you live in the dorms, you tend to get very close very fast. So for the first 21 years of your life, making friends is pretty much built in. And then you graduate. And you move to a new city. And everyone already has their friends from college, or high school, or church, or home. And you have TV. And a 10 pound weight gain. And a self esteem that’s plummeting faster than the sinking Titanic. You have a lot of things, actually. Like student loans up to your ears, parents with more exciting social schedules than you, and an increasingly loud biological clock. One thing you do not have is friends. You may have acquaintances who you work with or have class with. But you don’t have friends who you can call up on Friday night when you feel like staying in and watching a movie; or friends that you can show up at their house at random hours to vent about life. Example: last weekend my roommate was out of town. From the time I left class on Friday to the time she got home on Sunday night, I literally did not have contact with another human being. I did not open my mouth to speak words. No one called me. I didn’t have anyone to call. When you’re constantly hearing that your 20’s are the time of your life, and seeing your friends posting fun pictures all over the internet, and you’re sitting in your pajamas watching reruns of the Brady Bunch and blasting “All By Myself”…your ego tends to take a major hit. Lesson is, it’s really freaking hard to make friends as you get older because everyone already has friends. So if you are stupid brave enough to move to a new city, bring someone with you. Travel in pairs. Noah’s ark had it absolutely correct. Cause it tends to get lonely out there for a new grad.

Stayed tuned for my next post entitled "It snowed and I cried: A look into my Saturdays alone."

                                 Celine gets me, she really does...

Alone

Oscar Wilde said “I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person”.
Ya know what I have done a lot of this summer? Be alone. Ya know what I’m not very good at? Being alone. It’s tricky because I think I’m mainly an introvert, so I really don’t like having people around all the time, but I like having the option of having people around. Does that make sense? I don’t feel as alone when I know that I can call up a friend and catch up or have someone come over. But it’s in the quiet of the middle of the night, or in the middle of the day when everyone is at work, that I start to feel the anxiety of being alone. I can distract myself by reading or watching tv, or even napping, but eventually the distractions fall away, and I find myself alone. And loud. No, I don’t start screaming or belting out Celine Dion when I’m alone (very often), but when I say loud, I mean in my head. The anxiety produces thoughts and they come faster than a speeding bullet and pile up in my head like dirty laundry. When I’m alone I begin to over think absolutely everything (more than I already do) which just increases anxiety. And as anyone with an anxiety disorder knows, anxiety has a tendency to build upon itself and soon you become anxious about being anxious. So this summer I’m working on being alone with myself and with my thoughts. When I‘m alone and the thoughts are coming, I turn on some music and I journal. So I might be working on the whole “how to be alone” part, but I still definitely haven’t mastered the “not being defined by another person” part. But that’s a subject for another day!