Perhaps it’s strange, but when I was younger, I always envied the older single women in my life more than the women with families.
I constantly thought about what their lives must be like: having as much alone time as they wanted, living in a space they didn’t have to share with anybody, being able to spend whole weekends entirely alone.
I looked at them and thought to myself, That is what I want.
I felt as if there was something so spectacular about the freedom of living alone and being alone. I never have been a girl who hated being alone. I loved half-days at school because it meant I could go straight home and spend an entire afternoon before my mom came home by myself, reading or playing alone. I loved summer because I didn’t have to spend entire days in the company of other people, having to be social and active. I hated sleepovers, unless I knew my friend really really well, because it meant I’d have to be “on” for an entire evening and morning and I always craved the comfort of my own bed and home. I was never a girl who made plans with friends on the weekends because I wanted my weekends for myself: to recharge after five days of being with people all day. Even college was tough and I spent so much time holed up in my dorm room my freshman year. And if I wasn’t in my dorm room, I was holed up at the bookstore, reading a novel I’d picked off the shelf.
I never wanted to admit any of that because it was this aspect of my personality that I abhorred. I felt that there was something weird or wrong with me for needing so much alone time. Nobody else around me seemed to struggle! They all seemed to enjoy spending time with other people and had this comfort level with themselves that I didn’t have.
I didn’t understand who I was, not when I was in college and certainly not when I was younger. But as I learned about my highly sensitive nature and my introversion, all of the puzzle pieces clicked into place for me.
This is just what it means to be a highly sensitive introvert. My body physically craves alone time. My senses send me signals when I’ve had too much. Being around people is overstimulating for me because I’m taking in everyone else’s energy and spending so much time processing the environment around me. Alone time is a necessity and I need bunches of it to feel like myself again.
I need quiet, I need peace, I need only myself.
And here I am today, a girl who knows who she is. A girl who accepts who she is. A girl who loves that she’s an introvert and is completely okay with spending entire days alone.
I’m living the dream I wanted as a young girl: living alone and being alone. And it is everything I thought it would be, and more.
It is not lonely but fulfilling. Not scary, but comforting. Not overwhelming, but exactly what I need.
There’s beauty in this space that’s all my own. A space I get to decorate as I please and clean as much or as little as I want (thankfully, I inherited my mom’s obsessive cleaning tendencies!). It’s a space to come to when I’m feeling overstimulated by too much social interaction, a space to relax and recharge.
It’s my home. And it’s all mine.
This is the life I desired when I was younger and, while someday I want to move from this stage to the one that is a husband and family, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of what I have today and appreciate the space and the joy of being alone.
I am happy to hear that you are loving living alone so much! I also loved living alone. It is just nice to have complete control over your environment. Plus I am an introvert so I also need my alone time. I think it’s wonderful that you had older single ladies in your life to admire because that’s something that was sort of lacking in my life when I was young as everyone I knew was married. Until I started blogging, I didn’t really know of many other women who were in my same position of being single in their late 20s/early 30s. It was so helpful for me to connect with other women with similar lifestyles as it made me feel less alone and like less of an anomaly.
Enjoy the heck out of living alone! It’s truly a gift to have an opportunity to live by yourself, in my opinion!
I’m glad you are enjoying your new space so much! I really loved living alone and feel everyone should give it a try. It’s scary at first but I enjoyed is SO much more than I ever expected to. I miss it! Pete and I are so different in how we view a “clean house” and how we tackle household chores. I wind up taking on more than is fair and resenting him. We’ve been living together for 2+ years and it’s still a major struggle and the main source of conflict in our relationship. I have been going non-stop on weekends lately trying to fit in as many activities and get togethers as I can, knowing I won’t be able to in six more weeks, and part of me is so excited for Noah to be born just so I have an excuse to stay home and make no plans for 4 months. Being an introvert but acting like an extrovert is exhausting.
There is a woman I work with who just retired and is single and I do envy her frequently! I love my family, but I can only imagine the peacefulness and comfort of living alone. I am drawn to both things. I never really lived alone and wish I could have experienced that.
I am glad you have found your element in living alone! I lived alone for about 8 months when I was in university but I was honestly SO busy, I was gone for 12 – 14 hours every single day, so it didn’t really feel much like resting / being alone. Eric just switched to a 21 and 7 shift where he works 21 days straight and then gets 7 days off so I will be ‘alone’ for all my weekends other than one! I am a bit nervous about it. I LOVE my alone time but that’s a lot of alone time for me and I think I’m really going to miss Eric. I will need to find a balance where I spend one day each weekend with friends or family and then the other day on my own at home.
As a fellow introvert who hated sleepovers too and had the exact same college experience, I totally get it. I of course love my family, but some days I truly struggle with overwhelming feelings of needing to get away and be by myself for a bit. Enjoy this stage while you can! There’s so much beauty in it!
I imagine living alone would be wonderfully liberating. Do enjoy it for as long as you can!
I never got to experience living completely on my own, so I sometimes wonder what it would be like for me if I did. Several months after graduating from university my boyfriend and I moved in together, and that was that. Luckily, he is a high-on-the-scale introvert and we know how to balance interaction and quiet time pretty well. I feel like space is one of the main factors when living with a husband/wife and/or family – if there is enough of it in your home, you can carve out the solitary space just as you need, and I’m thankful the homes my boyfriend and I have lived in have allowed for that.
No wonder I stayed holed up in my dorm rooms or at the library during university too! 😛
No, no, not strange at all. I love being myself as well and wish I would have had a period in my life where I lived on my own (it was never in the cards for me somehow). Enjoy the heck out of this time 🙂