Loneliness for a Moment
An essay on learning to stand by yourself.
Hungover, I woke before sunrise today and called a friend to wish him a happy birthday. Feeling motivated after the call, determined not to let the previous night dictate my day, I grabbed my Nikes and left for a run. It was a cool morning, just after 7 a.m., when I made it outside. A steady breeze was blowing in off the ocean, making for a chilly start to what would eventually be a near 7-mile run. I felt invincible, keeping a steady, if not slow, pace, jogging alongside a fleet of other runners, most of them dressed as Lululemon advertisements. The birds were out, the sprinklers were on, the tourists were minimal. Why, I wondered, do I always feel so good running after a night of drinking?
I developed a bad habit a while ago to run during the middle of the day, when the temperature is the hottest and the UV index is the highest. But this morning was different. Change, as they say, is inevitable. So today, I manifested it. Something I learned to do a while ago, unhappy and often lonely.
During my first few years of living in San Francisco, I spent most Friday nights and Saturday mornings anxious about having something to do. I was young, in my early 20s, and I deserved to enjoy the benefits of a vibrant and thriving city. That’s what I told myself, anyway. The only problem was, I had no one to enjoy them with. Or rather, the person I wanted to enjoy them with no longer wanted to enjoy them with me.
When I first moved to San Francisco in 2015, I had an entire life built up in my head. A typical 9-to-5 job, happy hours after work, breakfast with my partner on Saturday mornings, strolling the park and grocery shopping on Sundays. It didn’t sound like much, but I wanted to keep the bar low. Better to aim for the hills than shoot at the sky and miss every star.
Just a couple of months after moving to the city for someone, we broke up, and that idea of a life collapsed. Sure, I still had my job. But now I had to find new people to attend happy hours with. And yeah I could probably just have breakfast by myself on the weekends and grocery shop in my free time, but all of those activities even sounded different when they were in the context of doing them alone, much less the empty feeling of actually doing them alone.
So I ventured out, made some friends, and tried new things. I was figuring out myself and who I wanted to be, though still struggling with how to spend my free time. There was still too much of it, especially on the weekends.
At that time, Mondays felt like a saving grace. I could work as many hours as I wanted knowing that the weekend and the empty calendar that I had to face were still days away. Tuesdays turned into Wednesdays, as they do, and before I knew it, Thursday had arrived and I still had no plans. And Thursdays in San Francisco were sacred. Most people treated them like the start of the weekend, and by that point, I had, too. But off to bed I went, knowing that at least I still had another day to make plans for the quiet weekend ahead.
When Friday inevitably arrived, I would fill my time by picking up take-out, telling myself that I would enjoy the night on the couch watching television. And if I passed out early enough, well, the night would end faster. The problem with that logic was that Saturday and its full day of no plans also arrived faster. So I looked for more ways to fill the time. Namely, running. In my Nikes, I used to think, loneliness was quickly abated.
I met someone else after I realized the other guy and I weren’t getting back together. And though I had changed a little, my vision for a life with a partner hadn’t. Except this time, somehow, in the midst of a new relationship, I still felt lonely. I had the partner for brunch on Saturdays. We did grocery shopping together on Sundays. And yet, no matter where I was, he was somewhere else, mentally. It was like dating my shadow. An unemotional figure just going through the motions.
Something in me shifted after that relationship ended. To his credit, he ended it, knowing I wouldn’t. I became more sure of myself, a trait I once had but somehow lost in the first breakup after moving to the city. I made friends and explored the world around me more. Again, a quality I didn’t realize I’d lost. I became snarkier and more forthright. I had opinions, and more importantly, I had standards. I don’t credit him for any of that, because at the end of the day he was still an asshole concerned only with himself. But I do credit him for dumping me, forcing me to see the error of my ways to which I was blind.
The days that followed that breakup were different. I had already ventured out, made new friends, and tried new things. If I had plans on Friday nights, I was having the time of my life. If I didn’t, I was picking up take-out and spending the night on the couch, watching something on television before passing out for an early night. Saturday mornings I was up for a run, Nikes in tow. (Do not start with me about Nikes being bad running shoes.)
You’d be right to think that nothing really changed about my weekend plans. I was still spending many Friday nights in, with too much free time on Saturdays. But something had changed. My mindset. I had started filling my calendar throughout the week, often leaving no downtime open on the weekends to just breathe. So when I had no plans, I used that time to recuperate. I stopped considering all of the activities I wasn’t experiencing and instead focused on the plans I already had. Forward looking, always.
I met more friends and started taking them up on their offers to hang out, joining for happy hours and attending company parties. In San Francisco, the possibilities were endless. And things changed. Those events had a butterfly effect on my social life that allowed me to eventually see how much we all just want to connect with one another. Not online, through social media. But in person, face to face, over weekend coffee dates or wine nights on the couch or out dancing to celebrate someone’s promotion. In taking up my friends on their offers, in saying yes and venturing out, I allowed myself to see more opportunity. Opportunity to meet new people, opportunity to discover new hobbies, opportunity to realize what I actually wanted out of my life. Those moments — and there were many over the course of the following four years — helped me realize that loneliness, at times, is inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be miserable.
As Henry David Thoreau once said, “I am not alone if I stand by myself.” And stood by myself I did.
As one does living in a big city, I began to travel. Over the last decade, I’ve taken countless trips, both domestic and abroad, to include many solo trips where I would go a week or two without talking out loud to more than a handful of people. Sure, at times it’s incredibly lonely, looking around at all of the couples eating and drinking together, lying on each other’s laps while reading in the park together, sharing popcorn and watching a movie at the theater together. And yes, there were plenty of times I got lost in my own thoughts, obsessing over what or who I didn’t have instead of considering the what and who I already had.
On one trip specifically, I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Amsterdam, inside my head, figuring out what I was doing an ocean away from home all by myself. It was my first international trip, and the ambitious side of me booked a five-city tour throughout Europe. In the dead of winter. (Would not recommend a Euro tour in February, though I’ve never paid less for plane tickets.) It was only my second city, but I was already feeling lonely. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to continue. You’re sitting in Amsterdam right now. You could be at work, grinding away like everyone else. Get it together, I told myself in that moment. By the next morning I was up and looking for my Nikes. (This was before the bad habit of midday running had developed.)
Feeling better, outside on a run, passing by tourists staring into shop windows and locals sipping espresso at tiny cafes, it occurred to me just how many people miss out on those experiences. Just how many people refuse to go out and see the world, or do any of those activities, for fear of having to do them alone. For fear of having no one next to them, missing out in an effort to avoid some of the inevitable lulls of life that can lead to loneliness.
One thing I hear more often than anything else from people I work with, friends I’m somehow friends with, and strangers just in passing, is how they refuse to do something because they don’t want to do it alone. They don’t want to go to a restaurant by themselves. They don’t want to sit at the beach by themselves. They don’t want to attend a concert by themselves. “You just went to Europe by yourself?” they would ask. “I could never.” I hear it so often that I wonder how these same people function in life at all, before remembering that I, too, was once in their shoes, curious but not courageous enough to venture out alone. Until I decided to stand by myself.
The truth is, we’re all alone, walking this planet, looking for someone to come alongside. Occasionally that someone sticks around for a moment, for others a lifetime. But it takes a certain level of self-respect to acknowledge that you are enough, that days spent alone are no less than days spent in the company of others. Because at the end of the day, whether sharing a bed with a partner or lying in a heap of blankets on your own, you’re still left in the quiet of the night, alone with your thoughts, standing by yourself.