I wish I was more confident doing things alone.

I wish I was more confident doing things alone. 

Like taking myself out for dinner, going to the cinema, or hopping on a plane for a solo adventure.

How I envy those who are able to enjoy their solitude – who can treat themselves to a fancy meal or a weekend break at a luxury hotel – with no qualms at all. 

I wish I had the confidence to “walk into restaurants and ask for a table for one, please”, and become “adept at eating with a fork in one hand and a paperback in the other.”

Instead, whenever I do dare to dine alone, holiday alone, do anything out of doors alone alone alone, I get antsy, agitated, paranoid, distracted, incredibly insecure. 

I’m always thinking about what others might think of me. I worry that people will pity me, think I’m strange, think ‘where are her friends?’ – that sort of thing. 

Why am I like this? Because of what I experienced growing up.

For some, getting to do things alone when they were young meant experiencing “the thrilling encroachment of adulthood and autonomy.” Taking themselves off to a café with nothing but a book for company was something to revel in, to relish, to feel all grown-up about.

But when I was a teenager, doing things alone meant social suicide. Heck, just being seen on your own could be enough for your peers to denounce you as ‘sad’.  ‘Loner’, ‘billy-no-mates’ – these were some of the worst things you could be called. It wasn’t ‘cool’ to strike out on your own, to want to do your own thing. You had to be popular, you had to hang out with friends. 

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have any friends. Because I was ‘too quiet’. And so I had no option but to strike out on my own, to do my own thing. So I hung out in the library alone, ate my lunch in the canteen alone. As a result, I was laughed at and left out even more.  

The comments from my classmates, as well as the questions from my parents (‘haven’t you got anyone to hang around with?’), still ring in my ears today, every time I enter a café by myself, or sit down at the cinema by myself, or check into a hotel by myself. 

It’s hard to shrug off the sense of shame, the sense of strange, of downright wrong, weird, and tragic, that was instilled in me when I was young as a result of not being social enough, for being by myself too much.  

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It sucks to be a solitary person who can’t enjoy being solitary. 

For this is a thing I know to be true – I was always going to be somewhat of a loner, I was never going to be the sort of person who had a big group of friends and a busy social calendar. I am innately independent, hardwired to prefer hanging out on my own. Unfortunately, my potential to flourish as the solitary-I-was-meant-to-be has been thwarted because of what I experienced in my youth. 

But I want to unthwart it! 

Life feels too limited otherwise.

I am a homebody. However, I don’t like being cooped up inside all the time. I actually quite enjoy people watching, eavesdropping, soaking up the atmosphere of a place. I like being around, if not with, others; being in society, if not always feeling a part of it. Social – but – solitary. 

If only I could lean into and luxuriate in my out-of-doors solitude more; without discomfort, without anxiety, without being so bloody preoccupied with what others might be thinking of me.

This is what I want. To claim the right I have to be confident in myself, to step out into the world, by myself, head up, sure-footed, content and fully present; with no more cowering, no more quivering; no more self-consciousness.