On Alonedom

I’m in a relationship. We are together for so long now and it’s kind of a love/hate relationship.

Being alone. Yes. That’s it. My relationship. My bond. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with being alone.

Personally, I enjoy being left alone in an empty room, or a walk without company, or cuddle up watching a movie without someone seeing me cry at the end. I’ve always enjoyed my independence. I love recounting my experiences at the end of each day and seeing myself overcome things without relying to someone else.

But being a teenager, I also feel particularly troubled with solitude. I’ve heard people say, “Lagaw man to bi Kate” or “Never be alone.” They are like red flags. Glaring. Perturbing.

There are a lot of funny, but often times sad depictions of “independent” women. I read Emily Dickenson a lot and I cannot forget the lines, “The horror not to be surveyed, but skirted in the dark, with consciousness suspended, and being under lock” I can relate to that. Bridget Jones’s lines say’s, “unless something changed soon I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine... and I'd finally die, fat and alone, and be found three weeks later half-eaten by Alsatians. Or I was about to turn into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.” Yes. Funny.


But have you seen, Liz Lemmon of 30 rock? Or a woman staring out from the windows? Or the Marchesa in “The Garden of Stubborn Cats”? Sad depictions, indeed.

They say that no happy, normal woman should find herself unaccompanied.

As a college girl, I a detest taking lunch alone in the Nursing Canteen. I repulse walking to school with my bag and stacks of documents as company. I definitely cannot stand sitting alone in one corner without doing something. That’s when my journal becomes very useful to me. I write to distract the awkwardness.

I finally came to understand why I hate being alone in public. I dislike being alone because I fear that people will assume I have no friends. I do not think I am alone in worrying about being branded friendless. I don’t want people thinking that I am not worthy of affection. Or that I’m a snob.

Having a pack of girlfriends on the way to the comfort room of Quezon Hall is like a proof that I am valuable, loved, and good. Pathetic but yes, sometimes, I measure my worth in the relationships I made.

But now I’ve realized that it’s not the quantity but the quality of friends I have.

Sometimes, I will find myself hanging out with people who I cannot stand just to dismiss the dread of being wrongfully judged as friendless and paradoxically, these are the moments that I come to value my solitude.

Though people wouldn’t really understand me, I will continue to prefer my solitude. What the hell! Who cares about what they think? Sometimes it is important to choose to be alone because the beauty of a moment all to oneself is one young woman rarely get to enjoy.

I maybe a loner, solitary…or a loser. What the heck. I prefer INDEPENDENT.