“You need to be okay with being alone.”
Some time ago, a friend gave me this advice. It’s been at the heart of my struggle for the last year, transitioning from years of (sometimes thriving) communal living to living alone in a studio apartment.
But does living alone mean I am alone?
Queen Brené Brown has a new Netflix special, The Call to Courage. Like a standup comedian’s show with a stage and audience and everything. Like a glorified TED Talk with PowerPoint and laughter and “ouch” moments throughout.
It’s so good, y’all. Please watch it.
Forget Beyoncé. Here’s my Queen B:
Yes, I have a proclivity toward melancholy. But I’m realizing facets about myself after watching Brown’s special. She devotes the latter part of her talk to “the most vulnerable of all human emotions.” And I couldn’t believe what it was.
Joy is the most vulnerable of all human emotions. We are terrified to feel joy. We are so afraid that if we let ourselves feel joy, something will come along and rip it away from us, and we will get sucker punched by pain and trauma and loss, so that in the midst of great things we literally dress-rehearse tragedy.
It’s so clear now — something I’ve always known to be true about me and yet see anew.
I’m terrified of joy. Joy just terrifies me. For how fleeting it is.
If I’m happy…it’s only a matter of time before something happens…and then I’ll be sad.
So, let’s just be sad and be done with it!
The sucker punch that sent me into a solitary studio apartment for the last year has often seized me with fear. Left me reeling with questions.
Can I ever cohabitate with humans again? Can I ever trust again? Can I ever love (and be loved) again? Am I even worth the pursuit? Am I the problem?
For months, I felt unable to experience joy. Or always counting down joyful moments. Or joking about said joy for surely it would only be ripped away in no time. Like it’s happened again and again and —
Living alone, you guys. Living alone has made me crazy. Or at least made me realize my crazy modes of thinking.
But maybe I’m not crazy. Not as crazy as I thought. Turns out, based on Brown’s polling of the audience, lots of people do what I do. Watching their kids sleep at night, counting down their inner clocks, terror-stricken that something will happen not because things aren’t fine but precisely because they are.
Just fine. The death knell. If things are just fine . . . that means it’s only a matter of time before —
You need to be okay with being alone.
Living alone — time with myself, time with God — has illuminated so much. The stories I tell myself. That “broken” is the status quo from which I’ve always been hesitant to leave. Because broken is comfortable.
Broken relationships.
Broken sense of home.
Broken dreams.
Doom. Everything is doomed. After all, living alone for the last year is Exhibit A.
But living alone for the last year has also presented me another Exhibit A for another case altogether. A case not for doom.
But a case for hope.
As I pack out my studio and prepare to hit the road for a few weeks, I’ve reached my healthiest state in years. A more proper view of God, firstly, complete with praise and lessons upon lessons in gratitude.
It’s a weapon, thanksgiving. I’ve been wielding it like a Jedi’s laser sword for the last year.
I’ve also discovered a more proper view of myself.
I’m worthy of self-care. Ab workouts before bed and healthier meals and SPF moisturizer each morning.
I’m worthy of love from others. Phone calls and coffee dates and crying sessions.
And I’m worthy of joy. Pure, unadulterated, uninterrupted joy. Joy living alone and joy living with others, should that ever be my story again.
Just because I live alone or travel alone or otherwise exist without any defined coupling to another human being, I am not alone. I can give myself permission to feel joy. I can smile.
I am smiling more than in recent memory. Learning to be silly again. Letting silliness be significant and not a “lesser” state to my melancholic standby. I recently moved my stuff into storage with a dear friend, and he carted me around the building, the breeze pushing my smile back even wider.
Joy.
I can cry, too, certainly. And I do. And I want to keep being vulnerable with my sadness. Firstly with my loved ones, and secondly with my readers.
But as Brown says of vulnerability:
When we lose our capacity for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding. It becomes scary to let ourselves feel it.
I’ve never thought about vulnerability that way until now. But gosh. Who cares about loneliness and masturbation and emotional dependency and the host of other “vulnerable” things I’ve written about over the years if I can’t confess this one thing:
I’m terrified of joy. More than anything, I think.
But now that I’ve named it, I want to better face this fear. Want to fight it, again and again. Want it not to have its way with me.
Want to slay it.
