What\u00a0a lovely surprise to finally discover how un-lonely being alone can be.<\/p>\n
– – – Ellen\u00a0Burstyn<\/p>\n
There\u2019s\u00a0a common misunderstanding about \u201cbeing alone\u201d vs. \u201cloneliness.\u201d Loneliness is\u00a0about feeling separate and disconnected. Being alone is about being with\u00a0yourself and enjoying your own company. I had a lesson about this last week\u00a0when I was at a dinner party with three married couples. A few of them had\u00a0birthdays close together and we were all celebrating. They are my inner circle\u00a0of friends. They have been for many years and I love all of them in different\u00a0ways.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0hostesses of the party, Ellen and Barbara, were generous as always and laid out\u00a0a great spread of homemade food. They made everyone feel welcome. I had known Ellen,\u00a0a superb cook, for years and years. When we first met, we discovered that we\u00a0had both been born in Worcester, Mass, one year apart, in the same hospital,
delivered by the same doctor.<\/p>\n
Rhoni\u00a0and Cristina were there. I\u2019ve known Rhoni since the eighties, one of those people\u00a0with whom you make an instant connection the moment you meet, as if you\u00a0always knew each other and you always will. She makes me laugh, she cooks like\u00a0a pro, her food is nutritious and delicious, and since I rarely use my oven, I always\u00a0love eating her food.<\/p>\n
Caroline,\u00a0another great chef, was there with her husband, Allen. I officiated their\u00a0wedding years ago, I had watched them go through thick and thin together as\u00a0married people often do, and they had come out the other side, more connected\u00a0than they had ever been.<\/p>\n
Then\u00a0there was me. I feel loved whenever I\u2019m around my friends, I feel heard and\u00a0seen, but an unusual thing happened that night. I\u2019m generally fine being without\u00a0a partner in this stage of my life, but I looked at the three married couples\u00a0and I wondered why I didn\u2019t have someone like they did. Was there something\u00a0wrong with me? Was I different or unlovable? Was I difficult to get along with?<\/p>\n
The\u00a0evening was a lovely one. We ate, drank, laughed and shared stories but I felt\u00a0disconnected. Lonely. I guess no one knew how I was feeling, I covered it up,\u00a0but when I got home, I felt badly and I began doubting my life choices. I can\u2019t\u00a0say that I\u2019ve made great choices in men. When I left the ballet at 20 years\u00a0old, I\u2019d lived in a bubble and due to my unusual lifestyle of chasing\u00a0perfection and performing with and for hugely talented artists, I hadn\u2019t\u00a0activated my boyfriend radar. I didn\u2019t know how. When I began living alone, I\u00a0was chasing excitement and a shiny life. The men I had danced with had perfect\u00a0bodies and were Narcissistic in nature as most athletes are, so that was what\u00a0felt familiar. I didn\u2019t know how I deserved to be treated and what mattered in\u00a0a relationship. I evaluated the men in my life according to how they looked and\u00a0who was attracted to me instead of whom I was attracted to.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0had a few short relationships with unsuitable men, and I was so terrified to be\u00a0on my own, I married one of them. He turned out to be a monster, but at least I\u00a0wasn\u2019t alone. I finally got away, I had to flee, and I had learned a thing or\u00a0two. I could see that it wasn\u2019t entirely my fault. On top of the unusual life I\u00a0had led, I lived in a society where being with a partner is considered better\u00a0than not having one. Some years ago, a woman who was a life coach scolded me\u00a0for not looking harder for a partner. \u201cYou\u2019re good looking, you\u2019re in good
shape and you\u2019re not being proactive enough to make yourself whole. You need to\u00a0find a partner to fill up the hole.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u00a0turned out that her husband went to jail for fraud soon after that and she ended\u00a0up alone, but that isn\u2019t the point here. It\u2019s about the way we are taught to\u00a0view love and relationships. The truth is that some people are in wonderful\u00a0relationships, some people are not, some people are terrified to be alone and\u00a0other people love it. It has nothing to do with what\u2019s right or wrong. Being\u00a0alone needs work and acceptance, and so does being with someone. Neither state
is better than another. It\u2019s about looking at your life the way it is, not how it\u00a0was, how you want it to be or how you think it should be. If you choose to\u00a0change things, that\u2019s fine, but I couldn\u2019t decide what I wanted until I stopped\u00a0blaming myself and telling myself stories that one way to live was better than\u00a0another. You can feel whole when you\u2019re alone and you can feel lonely when\u00a0you\u2019re with a partner who doesn\u2019t listen or understand you.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0had a bout of loneliness recently, I was isolating too much, a tendency that\u00a0writers have, so I decided to host a gathering for my birthday and invite all\u00a0the people that I loved and who loved me. Everyone I invited showed up, and as\u00a0I looked around the room, I was filled up with love and I felt whole. These\u00a0were my people, my tribe, and I vowed that when I got lonely in the future, I\u00a0would remember that night. I would remind myself that having community is most\u00a0important to me, above all else. I need my women who support me, my men who are\u00a0there for me when I need a male point of view and my sister who opens her heart\u00a0to me and always listens.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0my second marriage fell apart, I have to admit that I didn\u2019t miss him as much\u00a0as I feared being alone. I went to the supermarket and I felt a hole in my\u00a0stomach as I bought food for myself. But I took it day by day and before I knew\u00a0it, I had accepted my circumstances and I began to find comfort in my new life.\u00a0I turned to my creativity and in the first few weeks after he left, I began to\u00a0write a play that I\u2019d been thinking about. I met someone about a month later\u00a0and when it didn\u2019t work out, I made some guidelines for myself. I would only\u00a0date people who added something to my life instead of taking something away. I\u2019m\u00a0reminded of a hit song by Miley Cyrus who had just had a breakup. In her\u00a0attempt to make peace with herself as a single woman, she sang:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0can buy myself flowers, write my name in the sand.<\/p>\n
Talk\u00a0to myself for hours, say things you don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some\u00a0people call it a revenge song. I don\u2019t. I see it as a statement of female\u00a0empowerment and independence. I see it as a reminder that if we find ourselves\u00a0alone, whether we chose it or not, we can be enough for ourselves. We can be\u00a0alone without feeling lonely and when we want something, anything, we can fill\u00a0\u2018er up by giving it to ourselves.<\/p>\n
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What\u00a0a lovely surprise to finally discover how un-lonely being alone can be. – – – Ellen\u00a0Burstyn There\u2019s\u00a0a common misunderstanding about \u201cbeing alone\u201d vs. \u201cloneliness.\u201d Loneliness is\u00a0about feeling separate and disconnected. Being alone is about being with\u00a0yourself and enjoying your own company. I had a lesson about this last week\u00a0when I was at a dinner party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}