Alone – Me, Myself and I

What does it mean to be alone?
What makes me so scared of loneliness?
Who am I in a relationship?

So many questions and yet a guidebook is missing. For a while I have asked my friends what they think of being alone. It occurred to me that being alone is either precious time for yourself, time to fill with friends or something so depressing it is detested. A then there are the few who are happy alone. Though it seems, once someone has been in a relationship, it is harder to get back to being happy staying by yourself.
What the f*ck is wrong with all the fairy tales that led us to believe that being alone is never the finish but just an in-between or before… Because I disagree with this idea I started my own mission: being alone as a state of being, of mind and a way of life that will be at the foundation of any relationship I have and will have in the future. In the end it all starts with me, myself and I.

The year 2020 has been a wicked ride on the roller coaster of life. The world was forced to review its relationships between countries but more importantly, we, people, are all turned to look at our own relationships. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have the ‘normal’ freedom to meet up with whomever I want. From lock-downs to social distancing in the street. For me the year 2020 is filled with home-alone time, mostly in a very positive view. Actually I had different encounters with being alone. I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t one alone in discourse, there are endless meanings to it, some empowering and some apparently scary. I was always able to be alone in general and yet I also tried to run away from some forms of alone. I started to look at the I in relationships and, with help from my coach and friends, I discovered the different alones.

The first alone is the me, myself and I. I’m alone with myself. It simply states that I am an individual with thoughts and feelings that will never be experienced (directly) by anyone else but me. It is often a great alone because I have the most amazing thoughts and feelings most of the time. I dance alone in my room, sing and laugh, have the best time by myself. Most importantly this alone is the foundation, everything I experience comes from and through myself. If I have a good relationship with this alone, I have good relationships beyond myself. However, this alone is also tough. Only I had to deal with the feelings I got when my trip to Australia got cancelled. It is also only the I to feel alone after someone left.

This is the second alone. It is feeling lonesome. Being alone without this being a choice often feels like a heavier alone to be. It comes with a fear of hopelessness and sometimes pain. And still, this alone is full of life lessons and possibilities. Because if one cannot overcome the fear of being lonesome, a relation is always built on something to run away from. When being lonesome becomes okay, an experience and not a forever, it forms the basis for a new alone.

The third alone is alone together. The I in any relationship. This alone is filled with standing for what I want, a strongness and identity that form the I and are not vanished when companied. I struggled with this alone for quite a while. When I’m with friends my ‘third alone’ is strong, I learned to nurture the I, I am myself, authentic and powerful. Yet, I tend to fall in a love-relationship, the I becomes fluent and ready to shape into anything that fits the other I. I worked on the third alone, I learned how the I can stay in a We and to always come back to the first alone also when the second alone occurs.

The fourth alone is when the connection to the together is lost. When you are in a group yet feeling by yourself. I had almost forgotten this alone because of COVID since I haven’t been in groups for a while where I felt no connection. Still this alone is very real and can create negative associations or thoughts of (self-)doubt. And what if this alone is only pointing out how unique connection is? Something to work towards and cherish when it is there. Being this alone can also be embraced, celebrate how you do not fit in and learn from a  lack of connection.

The final alone is that one is never truly alone, we thought of the term alone yet we didn’t realize the impossible use of it. Even without ‘friends’ or whatever, in an overcrowded world there is always someone to keep you company. What makes being alone so scary if we never truly are alone? Although we live in an individualized society (in the West at least), we are part of a bigger world. It is up to each of us to experience the alones and create, invest and love together.

These alones are far from set in stone and a guidebook is probably a utopia. If you have any remarks, questions or own processes let me know haha. I’m doing my best to figure out these lil things. Amazed by every day and definitely curious for everything to discover!