I Like to be Alone!
Dear VTY Girls,
I am currently nervous, yet excitedly optimistic about my next phase of life – the phase where I move to Dallas with my ever-adoring fiance. I feel a little bit like I have been brought back to life in the past month as I quit my job in preparation for moving and have only been focusing on my art career.
The reason I think I feel renewed right now is because I am able to be alone. I don’t feel pressure from any outside source to perform a certain way. I can just think about myself and what I want to be doing with my life. I forgot how much I love being alone and feeling independent as I make decisions every day just for myself and my schedule.
This feels like the first time in a long time that I am actively in control of my life
And this is where some of my nervousness for the future comes from. I am excited and want to live a long, happy life with my fiance, but I also freak out thinking about the commitment to living in Dallas and building a life there. It feels like a decision I didn’t have control over.
There is also a part of my brain that wonders what my life would be like if I had no one to worry about but myself. I like to think that I would travel more, make crazier memories, and feel like the world is at my fingertips. I know this isn’t true. It’s just some of the hypotheticals my brain tries to throw my way when I’m feeling happy.
Anyway, all that to say, life is hard. I love being alone. I want to work hard and be excited about life. I want to travel more. And I want to be an active participant in my own life. I want to happen to the world rather than have the world happen to me.
If you guys have any suggestions on how to be an active participant in life or career suggestions for me, let me know. Please remember, I am on the road to 100k this year sooooo….
Also, if you want a little art piece, hit my line <3
vty,
Grace McCraw
Dear Grace,
I think I can relate to where you’re coming from. Just yesterday I was explaining to a friend how I miss the sharpness and space of being alone—it is so crisp and refreshing to me. It feels expansive in a way that constantly being around others does not. More things come to me, I know myself better and hold myself better.
My new job is on Boston University’s campus. A year ago I was here as a student and, though I still look like one, I am now here as staff. My life looks so completely different from what it was before, all the way down, most fundamentally, to my day-to-day life.
The last time I was walking along these familiar paths, I was so alone. I did not belong to anyone or anything, not really. I was on the periphery of friend groups that I could easily dip in and out of, with no intimate attachments to anyone. My days were open, my evenings often fading hazily into nighttime after dinner and stretching on forever, unpunctuated by any event or any body but myself. I walked forever, up and down my favorite streets that stretched forever across the city, listening to music that I can still so clearly associate to the different seasons. I was alone and, yes, frequently lonely, but that is a feeling I came to feel comfortable with long ago—I love how it drives me further into myself.
Now I am most definitely not alone. I feel as though I have acquired everything all at once and am now living a life as opposed to observing others’. I can’t help but feel that holding one single life feels much heavier than holding many at once. Do you understand? It’s a difficult transition for me now that it has occurred. I am comparing it to my experience before falling in love. Being in love with someone and in a relationship with them is better. I can say that (even though I don’t think I am allowed to). But I miss being alone. It’s hard for me to let myself be now. I am ashamed to admit the resistance I feel to taking time from my partner, even if it’s just a few hours, when I don’t actually have to due to external plans. Even though, in the moments where circumstances line up that give me free time for myself, I feel relieved and clear. That seems to imply that I am miserable when I am with my partner. I am not! Not at all, in fact. I feel so warm and loved and enwrapped—which is the exact opposite of being alone. Neither are bad. Just so so different. One I am more suited to by nature. The other feels like a gift I am allowed to have, miraculously–and I so cherish it, gripping it perhaps a little too hard.
It’s just such a shock how different my life is compared to less than a year ago. As I am sure you all can attest, I am ordinarily such a solitary person. I am still learning how to exist as myself in this new life, especially after resigning myself to the fact that I might always be alone.
Very truly yours,
Mackenzie
Dear Grace & Kenzie,
Growing up, I often spent much of my time sequestered up in my room, reading, writing, and generally just keeping to myself. I loved solitude because I could retreat into my mind and find ways to explore my own opinions and ideas in a safe space with no inhibitions. My room had, what felt like, a symbiotic relationship with my mind growing up, and to this day I still have my best ideas, moments of clarity, and my most centering times alone in my room.
However, in late 2020, when I came out to my family and my world, like, stopped spinning for two years (lololol) my relationship with alone time took a dramatic turn for the worse. Aloneness suddenly felt overwhelming, isolating in a dissociative way, and everything I had enjoyed about it was toxic to me. Left unchecked and unmoored without the physical presence of others to help ground me, I would work myself into such a state of panic because I couldn't tune out the darkest parts of my own mind. What would start as a small seed of an idea would rapidly spiral into full-blown panic attacks about all the classic religious-gay pitfalls and trauma. So fun!!
To combat this newfound fear of aloneness, at first, I just decided I wouldn’t be alone. During that time I had so many security sleepovers and friends with me around the clock. I also couldn't deal with silence so I constantly had things playing in the background, which led to me never being able to concentrate on anything super well. While I cherish and am forever indebted to the people who helped me make it through the worst months, I felt so discouraged because I felt like I was burdening them with my needy-ness, and also I felt like I had lost what I enjoyed most about myself: my independent nature, my love of quiet and solitude, and the valuable creative stimulation that it provided me. I used to be alone too much, then I was never alone, and then I didn't know how to find a balance between the two extremes.
Fortunately, time heals all wounds, and after panicking my way into the void too many times I guess my brain just got tired of it and decided to chill out?? It’s worth noting that I took Zoloft for a bit and did therapy as well which you could say contributed to my progress. Mostly I accredit it to me just forcing myself to sit in the discomfort of silence until I learned how to welcome it again. What was the quote from one of our letters that we were laughing at the other day? “Maybe I should sit in my misery and see if it moves me?” That's literally what I did until it worked. I’m sure there’s something philosophical to take away from that but mostly it sucked until it didn’t.
V.T.Y,
Avery
P.S: This is kinda off-topic from the rest of my letter, but Claire asked me to move in and I am scared if I don’t have my own room to retreat to I will become grumpy and stressed. I just built up a healthy relationship with personal space again and I don’t want to lose its luxury. I need suggestions for how to cohabitate peacefully while still making time for myself. I think I’m mostly worried about losing a space that feels like it is all mine. Any thoughts??
P.P.S: Grace I want art!! Are you still sending me the cute balloon with the messed-up face?
P.P.P.S: Did this letter even have any advice in it? Did it need to? idk.
Dear Grace and Kenzie and Avery,
What’s insane to me is how much we all seem to prize being alone.
The last time I was truly alone was this past summer -- my friends were carrying out bridesmaid duties for another friend and I spent 8 hours alone in a hotel room before the wedding. I didn’t realize how long it had been since I was alone with my thoughts, not responsible for anything but myself. And I really didn’t realize how much I missed it, how much I needed it. I love being alone but despise being lonely.
But I think there’s something healing about learning to be by yourself. I also think that involves learning the inverse: how to not isolate yourself in pursuit of quiet time.
Kenzie, the way you write about your love and the gift of a shared life brought me to tears. I think you can say it’s better to be in love. There’s a reason terrible movies like Anyone But You make 120 mil at the box office. Maybe not everyone wants that, but I think more people do than are willing to admit it.
Avery, don’t panic. I think this is a normal gripe in relationships. My parents have been married for 30 years and my mother still complains that she needs my dad to have an office because the whole house is her personal space. Do I think you need to demand an entire house just for yourself from Claire? No. But I think you will just have to talk it out and not be scared to voice your opinions. And maybe start Zoloft again. My brain is literally incapable of worry now that I’m on it.
Grace, selfishly I’m very excited for you to move to Dallas, due to the fact that I live here. I’ve come a long way from the homebody I was when we were growing up, and I will do my best to make sure we’re actively participating in life! Because I hate the feeling that the world is happening to me. I’ve never thought that was the way it was supposed to be. For a long time -- I think I let myself lean into being a victim of circumstance. Not anymore. I’ve been bored and restless and tired of that.
Anyways, that’s my scattered thoughts.
VTY,
Julianne