People often ask me how is it that I can manage to stay by myself without going insane, and today, I feel I can divulge that secret. The truth is you must be absolutely goofy with yourself, and your relationship with the self must have a sort of third-person friendliness. At least, that’s how I manage it.
It wasn’t like this earlier. As much as my disposition to stay alone existed, I felt terrible about it. It hurt me to be alone and so I made it a point to do things. I thought the productivity and keeping myself busy would take the emptiness away. That too, hurt in the long run.
It wasn’t until I met someone who taught me, not by saying it, but only by how they lived, to have a certain leeway with oneself, to be funny and crack the most terrible jokes with oneself, to be able to laugh out loud without anyone to laugh with, to be completely nutty, and to like it, to the point that it starts to trickle down to the times when you’re not alone.
It comes as a surprise to people when they meet me or spend time with me, the fact that I am rather stupid, as serious as my words make me sound. It was but one person who changed the entire course of how I lived by myself.
They are not in my life anymore–people who affect our lives significantly seldom stay–but when I’m alone in my apartment, reading, talking to myself, dancing, stubbing my toe and then bursting out into laughter, looking out my window, sipping coffee, clumsily spilling coffee and then shouting at myself for spilling coffee, I think about how if not for them, I would’ve pulled my hair out, if not worse, by now.
It was always in my disposition to stay by myself–that’s how I had always been–but they made it easier for all the days to come, and that in turn, made it easy for me to be with others. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of them every other day–no, not out of the feeling of loss or pain, not anymore.
I guess everyone fulfills the idea of forever differently.