(Nothing is more frightening than the silence waiting for you when you’re on your way home, knowing there is no one there).
What does it mean to live alone? To fear silence more than anything else. To know that when you get home, no one will be there to welcome you, except for the dirty dishes in the sink that someone will have to wash eventually. And that someone is you.
Living alone means developing a certain resilience to sadness. Getting used to loneliness with the illusion that, one day, this pain will serve a purpose. That day, however, won’t be today either.
It’s nice to have a little conversation with your inner self, but when those conversations turn into a sort of obsessive overthinking about everything, whether profound or utterly trivial, the party is over.
You feel trapped and start looking for any possible escape route: half an hour on Instagram, working overtime, going for an endlessly long walk, binge-watching an entire TV series. But all you’re really doing is postponing the reckoning. You keep running like a hamster on a wheel.
Physical activity is good for you, but running away from loneliness is not. It can hardly be considered physical activity; it is, for the most part, mental activity. Until even your brain goes into overload and is forced to come to terms with that tomb-like silence that made you search for alternatives in the first place.
The alternative is you.
(Loneliness is the space where I stopped existing and began to be).
What does it mean to live alone? To grow. To take responsibility for your own decisions. To be free from every kind of rule or imposition. To truly get to know yourself. Or at least to try.
And after all, trying means living.
Without uncertainty, there would be no future. There would only be the past. And who would want to go back there?
Even your favorite movie will eventually bore you if you watch it for the tenth time. And if it’s not the tenth, it will be the twentieth. Sooner or later, you will be forced to move forward.
From what? From life.
Do you really want to blame life? Do you truly believe that whoever—or whatever—conspired to create it all, and to bring you into this world, doesn’t want what’s best for you?
And yet, here you are again, back in that silent house, with darkness beginning to fall. How could you possibly see things differently? All you want is a little company.
But then you remember that living alone taught you how to cook, how to do the laundry, how to iron. Living alone taught you how to make decisions and how to think with your own mind. You learned how to suffer and how to live.
Living alone means cooking your favorite meal while whistling your favorite song. Turning up the music and having no one beside you complaining about the noise. Having no schedules. Shaping your time however you want.
