The good, the bad, the lonely

I was getting ready to iron my skirt for work tomorrow, and after I got the ironing board set up and I was trying to think of something to do to avoid the actual ironing, it hit me: I am feeling a little lonely.

To be honest, it kind of snuck up on me. In fact, I am quite unfamiliar with this feeling all together. I grew up in a house that was ALWAYS full of people--some of them my actual family, some of them just friends or other guests. I moved from there into an apartment with my two girlfriends, and then of course continued to have roommates all through college. Then I moved back home--same thing in that there was always people around, only this time, we were in a MUCH smaller, albeit beachfront, condo, so you were NEVER alone--then I moved straight from there into an apartment with my boyfriend. So to sum up, I have never lived by myself, or even had a lot of time alone for that matter (little brothers and their friends can be quite bothersome).

So tonight, when I started feeling a little off, it took a second for me to realize that this feeling I am feeling was indeed loneliness. I think it took my brain a while to settle down from the craziness of the past few weeks to actually realize that yes, I am now living alone. If I cook dinner, there is no one to eat it with me. If I see a bug, I have to kill it myself (or try to push it out the door with my shoe so I don't have to actually kill it and pick it up). If I want to tell someone about my day, I have to call my mom or tell my dog. OK, I know, I am getting very dramatic.... don't judge me, it's the loneliness. But the fact of the matter is that this is something I am feeling my way through.

So while analyzing this new feeling I am feeling, I started to wonder why being alone can make a person feel so funky, and I think it is that being alone can force a person to have to spend time with themselves. It makes you have to pay attention to your own thoughts and feelings, and sometimes, that is very difficult to do because we might discover things up there in our brains that make us a little uncomfortable. You might realize that you are unhappy in your job, or relationship, or that you are unhappy with your weight, or the way you have been treating a friend. When you are alone, you have the opportunity to recognize these thoughts that are up in your brain that you can usually ignore because you are too busy. Or you can ignore them because you are with other people and can focus on their thoughts and feelings.

While I do not recommend dwelling on these thoughts to the point of madness, I do think that every once in awhile, it is important to be alone with yourself. To check in with yourself. Not just in the car on the way home from work or in the bathroom when you pee. But completely alone. Away from distractions and other people. Purposeful aloneness (aloneness is an actual word--I Googled it).

Now, I am not saying that I am enjoying this feeling of loneliness. And maybe this entire blog is just a ginormous effort at convincing myself that this feeling of loneliness is actually a good thing and that I am completely fine, but whose to say it is all bad? I mean, I feel a little blah, and OK yes, I have been talking out loud to myself a little too much, but I did get out of ironing my skirt for a little longer all because I was feeling a little lonely and thought I should write about it. So it can't be all bad, right?

I think I am right. I think that it is OK to feel lonely, and it is important to have time to yourself, with your own thoughts. No, I do not plan on becoming a hermit. Yes, I am slightly looking forward to going to work tomorrow so I can talk to some people. But for right now I am going to just be alone, maybe feel a little lonely and come up with some other thing to do to further prolong the ironing of the skirt.