Spending time alone

If there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that you will wake up with yourself until the day you die.

How does that make you feel? Are you,

a)      comforted by that fact, or

b)      confronted by it?

I’m trying to get to a) : A place where I’m confident that I can live a rich and fulfilling life on my own accord. A place where a weekend without socialising is a peaceful prospect. Where I go to sleep each night, with my arms wrapped around the most stable and secure being in my life – myself.

Saying that sounds slightly cold-hearted. As if I want to avoid ever letting someone else become more important to me then myself. But I long for the power of feeling confident in my own company. Where I don’t rely on others to do the things I love. I have myself – and the world becomes wide and welcoming, as a result.

For a fiercely independent person, I can find it challenging to slow down and relax into my own company. To feel secure spending time alone, doing little. I’d rather distract myself with people and plans then confront my own companionship.

To be fair, I have no desire to spend vast amounts of time alone. I want to embrace the warmth and wonder of relationships. Of course I do!! But I want this as much as I want late nights spent solely with cool sheets and my own thoughts to be a comforting - not confronting - thing. I want loud time spent with friends to compliment quiet time spent with self, not diminish it.

So, I travel alone. I go to the cinema. I join running clubs. I move houses. I care for my finances. I gift myself new experiences without involving the people I know and love. And in doing so, I lay down the evidence that I am the master of my life.

I think, deep down, if I’m honest with myself (which is the entire point of Luce Let Loose, so I may as well be) I’m worried that if I don’t build the foundations for being comfortable by myself now, at some point I’ll fall into a relationship where I’ll pretend that it’s something I don’t need. I’m scared of how swiftly I could neglect this important part of myself if I ever was to fall in love…

Because, that’s what love is, right? Letting someone else mean more to you than you mean to yourself. Preferring their company, over your own. ‘Giving them your heart, knowing they could break it, but trusting that they won’t.’

Eeek – the vulnerability !!

That’s why I felt such desperate pressure to spend time alone – building a relationship with myself – while I have the space to do it. a) is a safety blanket for heartbreak and whatever else life throws my way.

I fell into thinking that if I don’t secure a) now, I’ll fall in love and it will be lost for me, forever.

Fortunately, there’s one other thing I can guarantee. Relationships with self are inevitable. And working on them is never a waste, and it never stops. Regardless of the people you spend your life loving.

You have yourself until the day you die.

Bask in the potential of that.