A collage made by me on Canva, consisting of different images I’ve taken while “taking myself on dates” over the past few weeks. Text reads: (top left corner) “Dates with myself”, (top right corner) “poetry night”, (bottom right corner) “plant shopping (fell’s point)”, and “a trinket haul”.

I came to the realization this past summer that I have never lived alone. I grew up with a large family, lots of siblings and cousins always around, and went straight to living with my partner and their family at eighteen. After that, I came to college, where I’ve always shared a dorm or apartment with three other people. So learning to exist by myself, in a way that is not dictated or defined by the people around me, has been trickier than I’d care to admit.

In my last year of college, I am learning that solitude can be a very good thing. I am living with people I enjoy spending time with, trying to be out of my apartment often, and go on outings with friends when I can. But taking a few moments for myself in the kitchen late at night, when it’s just me and the rest of the apartment is (presumably) asleep, has become a form of meditation for me.

It begged the question: how do I exist on my own?

I have a fair number of friends, along with both a partner and a spouse. I exist in groups, in the context of other people more often than not. I’m referred to as “the husband” by my spouse’s friends who are meeting me for the first time. My friends sometimes introduce me by my job title, my major, or even the spaces on campus I hang out in. Even as a kid, I was introduced in context of or in comparison to my siblings and parents. So when it is just me, what does that look like? I found out this semester, in a way I didn’t expect to.

Remember that spouse I’ve mentioned a few times? They graduated almost a full year ago now. Last semester, we were able to see each other semi-frequently for dates or weekend trips home, but this semester has kept us both busy.

I go stir-crazy on campus, so I started out the semester with outings with friends. Book festivals, boba, even just going to parks or out for dinner. I tried to keep myself going out. But then I realized that… I don’t need my friends to be with me when I go places. In fact, because of all of our schedules, it’s kind of easier if I don’t. So, one day on a whim, I decided to go to a plant shop by myself. I invited a friend if she wanted to go, but her schedule didn’t allow it, so I just got in my car and headed off.

It was strange at first, freeing in a weird sense. I didn’t have to worry about time, or about taking too long to get there or in a particular shop or walking from place to place. It took me nearly five minutes to parallel park, but I wasn’t worried about it because I had no time constraints. It was just me, checking out a new plant shop because I wanted to. On the way back to my car, I stopped at a new coffee place in the city I’d seen but never tried. When I got in my car, I decided I wanted to go to another shop too, so I put the other shop in my GPS and didn’t bat an eye when I saw it was fifteen minutes north of the city.

Since that day, I’ve taken myself out on “dates” two more times. Once was on the way to meet a friend for a poetry reading, where I got myself a little snack on the way out and intentionally parked a bit far from the venue so I could take a walk by myself. A short date, but meditative, important, and peaceful nonetheless. Today, after a hair cut, I decided to check out a shop I’d seen on Instagram that morning. I drove, totally spur of the moment, across the city and walked around little shops on the same street for hours and bought trinkets and other things with no fear of my friends seeing me spend money.

I try not to think of these “dates” as “treating myself.” I don’t need an excuse to buy myself a beetle specimen I’ve been wanting for years, or a new crystal for my shelf. I don’t need to say that I’m “treating myself for making it through the semester,” a thought I tried to justify my purchases with today. But I didn’t need to justify them, and I still don’t. Having a space that I can be quiet in, reflective in, that is covered in shiny things and fun trinkets that make me happy? That’s important. That’s all the justification I need.

So what have I learned about myself? What’s the great, life-altering conclusion I’ve come to from this?

Not much, really. I’m new to it. I’m still learning, figuring things out. Surprisingly, I don’t like having my headphones on in public. I am chattier than I would have thought. I’m polite whether or not I’m around people I know. But that all feels surface level.

I like solitude, that much I know, at least when I can choose it. I enjoy doing things by myself in a way I absolutely wouldn’t have expected to given how I’ve spent the last 22 years of my life. I love to be in community, and having friends who love the person I am has been incredibly important, especially over the last few months. But solitude gives me rest. And I need rest to maintain myself, to sustain myself. I’ve seen lengthy debates over the topic of “rest as activism,” and while I could go on for hours about the nuances of that statement alone, I think I can very simply say that the work I do requires rest. The work most of us do requires rest. And solitude, as I have found, has become rest. Community is a vital part of my life, but I don’t think I could function in the way I want to without a few moments to myself, some time to regroup.

I don’t like solitude when it’s pushed upon me, when I think about being grounded as a child or the periods in my life where I didn’t have friends to spend my time with. Forced solitude, or perhaps better said: isolation– is a sickening thought. We learned about situations of this this semester, and I worry that my defining it like some great, romanticized thing may take away from the struggles of others. But I also think that as a kid who was always around people, I often still felt solitary. No friends to invite over to play, siblings older than me who didn’t want to be uncool for having their kid brother around. Having my phone taken away for poor grades. Perhaps in some ways, me choosing to exist alone around all the people I see when I’m out in public is a small act of reclaiming myself, reclaiming my right to exist as just me.

Solitude is a complicated thing, and I’ve seen many different sides of it. But this kind, the kind where I choose to exist alone, even if just for a brief few hours, have helped me connect more deeply to those around me when I’m with them. To know oneself gives you the footing to connect in that way, and I feel it in the friendships I have now.