On Being Alone

I stood waiting to enter the security line at the airport, and I can't remember feeling more alone. My two duffel bags, one yellow and one blue, just so happened to match the colors of the Swedish flag, an emblem which I would come to both love and hate. I would love the flag in the summer, watching it wave in the warm breeze as I biked home in perpetual dusk, but I would hate it as it hung lifeless against a gray November sky.

My bags had disappeared into the abyss of the airport long ago. Passport in hand, with what few other things I had with me, I made my final goodbyes. I hugged my dad and my best friend goodbye. And then I stood and watched. Through misty eyes, I watched the people that loved me most become smaller and smaller as the strolled down the sunlit terminal. 

I moved to Sweden after I graduated from college, my diploma hot off the press. Sweden is a place, almost by design, where foreigners must learn to be alone. The language is intimidating - it took me nearly three months to learn how to pronounce my own address properly. I ventured into the world of dating Swedish (and German, Canadian, and Finnish) men, with no success. It took me another four months after that to find my rag tag group of friends, mostly foreigners with the incidental friendly Swede. But I still felt an palpable loneliness, one that hasn't really gone away since that moment at the airport. 

I moved back to DC, my hometown, surrounded by family, old friends, and the comfort of familiarity. Yet I felt more alone than I did living in a foreign country. I've made new friends and traveled all over the continental United States and its territories to visit old ones. Yet, I still feel like I'm going through life alone. I don't know why I feel this way, and I know I'm not unique. Being alone is my greatest fear, my biggest insecurity, and the reason I lie awake at night. 

I learned to be alone in Sweden out of necessity, when I didn't have a smartphone or reliable wireless internet. Now, as I sit here half-watching the Oscars, texting my aunt, and writing this piece, I simply can't be alone with my thoughts. They tell me I'll never get into graduate school or finish my half marathon training or be in a happy relationship again. They are, undoubtedly, lies my anxiety is telling me, but they are so terrifying that my only coping mechanism is to bathe myself in constant distractions. 

I'm reminded of what Louis C.K. has said on why in our modern times we can't be alone: 

"You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That's being a person.

And sometimes when things clear away, you're not watching anything, you're in your car, and you start going, 'oh no, here it comes. That I'm alone.' It's starts to visit on you. Just this sadness. Life is tremendously sad, just by being in it."

I started to reflect on the nature of being alone after I read that Oliver Sacks, famed neurologist and one of my favorite writers, has terminal cancer at age 81. He wrote in a recent a recent New York Times op-Ed that while he is getting his affairs in order, he is focusing on how he wants to spend the twilight of his life. "I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential," he writes. "I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at 'NewsHour' every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming."

After I finished the piece, I began to wonder what life would be like without the distractions: without the constant chatter of texts and Twitter, without Neil Patrick Harris in his underpants on my TV screen, without the daily sound bath and dinging of my phone. Is life really tremendously sad without them?

And so, I aim to find out. I'm going to unplug - no Facebook, no Twitter, no email after work, no electronics before bed, no mindless scrolling. But just for a little while. 

Bromantic Love

Like most single women, I have a complicated relationship with Valentine's Day. While most people who know me would describe me as verbose - or as a co-worker recently said, loquacious - I don't like showy displays of affection. The pink and hearts make me feel like Cupid vomited up an infectious pathogen that seems to strike everyone at this time of year. People in happy relationships agonize over the perfect gift for their significant others. People in unhappy relationships avoid discussing prescient break-ups just because the holiday exists. People in new relationships vacillate between acknowledging and forgetting February 14. And worst of all, single people lament being single.

I've been thinking recently about what it really means to love someone. I don't mean being in love with someone; modern scientific advances tell us that falling in love is a chemical experience, where the dopamine in our brains is off the charts before oxytocin takes over and bonds us with our partner. I'm talking about the mundane kind of love that exists everywhere but is rarely discussed. It's the kind of love between friends, people who have chosen to associate with one another just for fun. I like to think of it as "bromantic" love, shared with people that you can count on to grab a spontaneous beer on a Friday night or will accompany you to a sex shop or will offer to help you move your couch, but will secretly hope that you won't actually accept their help. It's the kind of love that takes the physical form of chest bumps, high fives, pats on the back, and warm hugs. It's a love so commonplace that we can't even pinpoint the moment we fall into bromantic love, or even the moment when we met the other half of our friendship.

Whether they are aware of it or not, my friends have been the reason I exist and continue to thrive. My college roommate, without fail, brought me soup and medicine every time I inevitably got a bad cold in the winter semester. My European friends didn't judge my American ignorance of Swedish life, and they made me a lifetime's worth of English roasts. My roommate and best friend let me cry about my break-up on the night I had planned, and subsequently cancelled, a housewarming party. My college friends sat with me and rubbed my back during my most crippling anxiety attacks. My new friends in DC listen to me talk about my adventures in 20-something life, even though they've got a few years on me. And most significant of all, I get to celebrate the anniversary of a 25-year long friendship this year with my oldest friend. To me, there is nothing sweeter or more sacred than the bonds of friendship, made by choice, sustained with love.

Perhaps we need a cultural shift in how we think about Valentine's Day. After all, romantic love has so many holidays and traditions it's already claimed - the New Year's Eve kiss, mistletoe, the couple's Halloween costume, weddings, engagements, anniversaries. Why isn't there a day that we celebrate our friendships?

Bros and bro-ettes, let's take back Valentine's Day. Lovebirds, you can have the rest. And a very happy Anna Howard Shaw Day to us all!