Living Solo: My Experience
I’ve talked about living alone a little bit throughout the years in blog posts and brief Instagram captions, however, I figured it’s about time that I should really get into some details.
In case you didn’t know, I moved to Hawaii at the age of 18 entirely alone to live entirely alone--and I didn’t come for school, either.
I did not know a single soul on the island before I moved.
I’ve always been a hyper-independent person and a lone wolf. I have a hard time trusting people and as a result, rely as much on myself as humanly possible. Whenever I find myself in a position where I don’t know how to do something, I immediately seek ways to learn how to do it *by myself.* I have an incredibly hard time asking anyone for help, mostly because I don’t want to burden them with my issues.
This has benefited me greatly, but it also had its downfalls.
In terms of living alone, however, because of my self-reliant nature, the prospect of living alone excited me and didn’t intimidate me in the slightest.
People have asked me if I was scared to be alone in my apartment or scared to go to the beach alone. I can honestly say that I never was. It felt natural to me and I never really thought it was out of the ordinary until people would act like it was absolutely mind-blowing that I spent days on the beach with only my sketchbook and Spotify for company.
For me, the physical and technicalities of living alone was never an issue.
I know how to cook healthy and cheap food, to clean, to maintain a budget, to work hard at my job, to entertain myself (ex. doing creative activities), to keep a daily practice of exercise, etc.
(left) 10/3/22 - sketch of my morning routine
As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now if you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, it’s the mental challenges of living alone that were my biggest struggles.
Before I get into that, however, I can’t ignore the numerous perks that truly shaped me into a better and stronger person.
First of all, the absolute total freedom living independently has is pretty unbeatable.
I could basically do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. My only set-in-stone obligation I had the entire time I lived there was going to work. Other than that, I was free to do with my time what I wanted with it…which was mostly surfing and painting. On days off or before work, I would explore the island, Googling random new beaches or parks or towns I could adventure around in. I also could make whatever I wanted to eat without anybody complaining that they “didn’t like it” and be as spontaneous as I wanted without having to rely on anyone else to “be available” to do it with me. I didn’t have any roommates besides my cat, so I could decorate my apartment completely to my liking and live however I wanted to.
I had the total freedom to experience what I wanted to and become the person I wanted to be. I had the space and time to work on myself without pressure from people around me.
However, I must say that despite how incredibly intoxicating total freedom can be, it can also be extremely overwhelming.
You really have to learn how to manage your time and be entirely self-motivated.
Nobody is there to tell you what to do or push you to get such-and-such done.
It’s all up to you. If you aren’t self-motivated enough, you’re not going to take advantage of your freedom at all.
For example, If I wasn’t absolutely determined to learn to surf and did everything I could to be able to do so, I wouldn’t have ever done it.
Nobody was telling me what to do or how to do it. Nobody was there to train me or anything. I had to do my own research. I bought a car so I could drive to the breaks, I bought a foamie, downloaded Surfline, watched surf tutorials, and made a point to get out there as much as humanly possible.
If you want to do something, you sure as hell can do it if you quit scrolling through TikTok, get off your ass, and push yourself to learn how.
Regardless of your situation, you have the ultimate power to do with your life what you want because it’s your life.
So do the damn thing!
Living solo also pushed me to be more open to new experiences and people.
Because I had nobody to talk to 99% of the time, the once totally-shy-lowkey-antisocial-anxious-introvert-me was much more open to conversation.
It took a little time, but eventually I felt comfortable talking to basically anyone and didn’t feel afraid to. Working in food and customer service really pushed me to step out of my comfort zone. I worked with so many different people that really sharpened my communication skills and made me a much more open-minded and accepting person.
In addition to that, I jumped on any opportunity to get to hangout with someone.
I got to experience things I never in a million years would have tried before because I was a fearful and highly self-conscious kid growing up. If you had known me as a teenager, you would know that I would never have even considered going on a hike, or farmer’s market, or the beach, or concert, or a restaurant with somebody I barely knew.
However, once I was living alone, I figured there was nothing to lose and it would be an exciting experience and story to tell regardless of what happened. Sure enough, I always had an interesting time and developed so many deep and unexpected friendships. Plus, the fact that I essentially had an entirely free schedule all the time made me able to seize opportunities as they came up and really show up for the people I became close to.
It became pretty rare that you’d find me turning down an opportunity to hangout, and nowadays I jump on basically any opportunity to spend time with people I love regardless of the venue or activity.
From my experience, living alone is possibly the best way to grow internally.
The mental and emotional struggles of independent living are extremely intense, but they will shape you into a fearless, confident, and strong person. My biggest challenges were all mental, but I learned so much about myself and the world around me through it all. As painful as it is, all your insecurities and fears are easily brought to the surface when all you have for company is your own mind. Consequently, you have to learn how to deal with them in a healthy way. You have to learn strategies for processing, coping, and healing.
The most important thing you have to learn is self-love and self-care.
I can’t emphasize this enough.
Before I lived alone and for several months into it, I truly did not love myself.
I took care of myself physically by eating healthy, exercising, doing skincare etc, but I didn’t think it was important to take care of myself mentally and emotionally. In all honesty, I low-key thought it was selfish to even speak good thoughts about myself, and the importance of mental health never really struck me before.
However, living solo revealed to me how critical it was for my literal survival. The non-existent amount of self-worth I had was suddenly smacking me in the face and made me realize how much negative thought processes and limiting beliefs were burrowed deep into my psyche.
For me, I based my worth on how “good” I was at art, at work, at anything. I was an extreme perfectionist who ripped herself to shreds constantly. How I perceived people’s reactions to me or my work would determine how worthy I thought I was. I always feared that I was “delusional” or something for thinking something I created was good if there wasn’t numeric “proof” such as likes on social media or money in my bank account.
I really had to learn to let go of this mindset and work on me liking me.
I had to learn to accept myself, be grateful for who I am and where I came from, and to be confident in what I liked without “proof” that it was good enough from superficial external sources. I had to recognize that I was a person worthy of love because I truly cared about other people and the world around me.
That my worth was not dependent on others but on how I saw and carried myself.
I’m not gonna front and say this was an epiphany that led to immediate change. No, it took months and months of ups and downs, traumatic heartbreak, and weekly therapy sessions to get to the point where I am today.
Now I find I really don’t give much thought to how people think of me, because I know that their opinions of me have nothing to do with who I am as a person, but stems from their own experiences and mentality.
I believe I am a good person, and I like the person I am, so who cares if they think I dress like a ratched hippie surfer girl?
There’s no valid reason for them to dislike me unless I’m an asshole to others and the planet. If they for some reason do dislike me, who cares because they don’t even know me.
I learned to take ownership and acceptance of my flaws and mistakes and work to improve on them without beating myself to a pulp.
Personally, I don’t think I would have made this internal progress if I wasn’t living alone and essentially thrown into the fiery furnace of dealing with mental health.
I quite literally would not have survived if I didn’t spend so much time working on myself internally.
It’s been hell, but I am so very grateful for it all because I have grown so much from it all and feel like a much kinder person for it.
In addition to solo living teaching me self-love, it helped me really embrace my individuality and become my own person.
I’ve always been the type of person who doesn’t hop on trends or likes to “follow the crowd,” so this has never been too much of an issue for me. However, I did realize how much more open I was to expressing myself entirely how I wanted to since living alone.
I wore what I wanted to because I liked it and it made me feel good. There was nobody I felt like I needed to “impress” and I could care less about looking sexy or whatever because I figured I only wanted to attract people who would look at me for who I was and accept me no matter what I was wearing. For me, oversized band shirts, bell bottoms (with the biggest flare possible), or some cargo pants or board shorts, big earrings, ratched Birkenstocks, and my hair just a messy poof of its natural texture was when I felt the most me.
It felt so good to just be and look how I wanted to without literally anyone commenting on my appearance before I left my house.
I learned to walk with my head held high and be unapologetic about the way I presented myself.
(above) 11/22 and 12/22 - sketches depicting newfound self-confidence and affirmations
However, as much as living alone benefitted me, it had one major obvious pitfall: loneliness.
Being as independent, self-motivated, and self-reliant as I am, I didn’t think loneliness would plague me too much. I didn’t really even think about it before I moved. I didn’t think that coming home to nobody every single day would make me feel so empty. I never needed anyone to tell me what to do or hold my hand while I learned something new, and I never felt like I needed company to do the things I enjoyed doing.
I was a natural loner, and I had been let down a lot by “friends” growing up so I figured I was better off that way anyway.
However, I didn’t realize how important spending time with others, specifically ones you love, is for your mental health and happiness. I also didn’t think having a community was that important. In fact, I had completely rejected the idea of it because I had never once felt like I belonged in one before.
Again, I thought I was better off without it because I have an extremely hard time trusting people.
As a result, I didn’t initially make too much of an effort to meet other people outside of work.
Furthermore, because of my age, meeting new people around my age outside of work was pretty challenging and unmotivating for me. I couldn’t go to a bar or some social events because I wasn’t 21 yet. Additionally, I found it hard to relate to most people my age because I had leapt forward into a life stage they weren’t in. I found more deep connections with college graduates or people in their late 20s than people my age because we were dealing with similar things. I wasn’t a student, so I couldn’t meet people through school or campus events I was interested in.
Pretty much the whole time I lived alone I pushed aside and attempted to ignore feelings of loneliness.
To be honest, I chalked it up to weakness. I convinced myself it wasn’t important, that it was just my mind trying to attack my inner peace as usual. It took me quite a long time to pinpoint that the reason I felt this constant undercurrent of sadness was because I longed to share my experiences and time with others.
The loneliness I felt wasn’t a result of feeling insecure about doing things alone, but rather that I wanted to share my time and experiences with someone else.
This first started to become clear to me when I started writing in a 5 Minute Journal and flipped back through the pages. I noticed that on every single page, the ”highlight of the day” section always, without fail, included time spent with another person. Most often it was simply calling my mom or my sister or best friend or having a fun conversation at work with one of my coworkers.
In all honesty, I panicked when I discovered this because I thought it meant that I was too dependent on others.
As a result, I wrote it off. I consistently told myself it was weakness because I knew I could never truly depend on anyone and that my happiness could not and did not revolve around others.
I could find total contentment alone, this was true, but everything was so much more enriched when it was shared with others no matter how much I didn’t want to admit it.
Despite my determination to ignore this very real fact, I found myself in a situation where I basically did everything I feared I would do--I latched onto someone and became very emotionally attached.
(above) 12/22-2/23 - sketches from that period of confusion, abuse, and attachment. Pretty depressing and dark lol
I won’t get into the details here, but in short, the loneliness I had been pushing aside made me vulnerable and caused me to run into a toxic relationship.
I believe this is a danger that isn’t really talked about too much: just how vulnerable loneliness makes you to destructive choices and paths regardless of how independent and logical you are.
When I met this person, I gave literally every fiber of my being to him and let him take advantage of me. At the time, I had no friends who I felt close enough to and comfortable enough with yet. I didn’t spend much time with anyone outside work until I met him. He was essentially the only person I had, so I ignored red flags and my gut feelings because I was so happy to have literally anyone--and someone who I was attracted to and had fallen for no less.
Therefore, I became deeply invested and ended up in a bad situation that I had a hard time reconciling with and recovering from.
Because of this experience, I have a lot more understanding and grace for people who join religious cults or end up in other nefarious situations that to the uninformed observer make no logical sense. Now, I didn’t join a cult or anything like that. But I do understand the psyche of it: how one can feel so completely isolated any promise of community or a relationship causes them to jump all in without considering red flags.
Not having anyone else around me at the time made the situation way worse and more isolating.
When the only person around you that you are “close to” is the one that is psychologically and emotionally abusing you, who do you turn to?
I tried to deal with it all alone and didn’t ask for help for months and months, which naturally didn’t do much for me.
Everything turned around when I met some great new friends at work who helped me through it and guided me into some of the best months of my life. Additionally, I finally let go of my pride and started talking to a therapist. Without them, I don’t think I would’ve gotten through the pain and confusion and trauma of what I had experienced (huge shoutout to y’all, mahalo).
However-- my hyper-independent-to-a-fault psyche chalked this newfound joy up to surfing and the never-failing beauty and freedom of Hawaii--not the fact that I was making fun memories with great people.
I don’t think I finally admitted and accepted that I was lonely until last fall when I once again found myself heartbroken, confused, and totally lost.
That’s a whole other long story I’m not going to get into right now, but I think the root of the issue--loneliness--finally clicked after I listened to this totally life-changing podcast about happiness that emphasized how one of the factors of finding true happiness is having experiences…with others.
It made me think back on all the times in my life where I was happiest. Every single one of them and the ones I remembered the most included times I spent with wonderful people.
My family, my friends, coworkers, and hell, even strangers in some cases (shoutout to my Canadian Zach Bryan concert bros).
I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew it was true because literally nothing else in my life was weighing me down.
This tangent is all to emphasize how important it is to surround yourself with a variety of good people and make time for some social interaction.
How loneliness is a very real and ultimately dangerous thing if you don’t address it in a healthy way (not becoming dependent on others, but making sure you spend time with others).
Living alone amplifies loneliness tenfold, so you really gotta find good people (which for someone like me—a hyper-independent introvert—is pretty difficult to do).
For me, having a job, especially one where I literally had to collaborate and interact with people, was a saving grace.
I met basically all my close friends there, and oftentimes going to work was the highlight of my day for the mere fact that it meant I could get out of my head and interact with interesting people.
I do not regret living alone and I honestly recommend it to anyone who wants to really grow and work on themselves.
I’m pretty positive solo living is the most effective way to “find yourself” and grow mentally and emotionally stronger. It is way more difficult than you may expect, but with discipline, grace, and courage, you can be successful and grow tremendously stronger from it.
I am so grateful for this experience, but I will admit: I don’t think I would do it again after learning more about what I want in life at the moment.
Living alone is intoxicating but also suffocating, and it’s not for everyone.
If you’re thinking about it, I encourage you to absolutely go for it but advise you to be aware that it’s not gonna be all smooth sailing.
You have to be extremely self-motivated, disciplined, and brave.
All.
The.
Time.
If you’re not…you’re basically not gonna survive (financially, physically, and mentally).
Anyhoo, thanks for reading this long rambling reflection.
There’s a lot more I could get into, but I’m not going to bombard you anymore here (haha).
If you have any questions for me about anything I’ve mentioned here, feel free to reach out!
I am more than happy to offer any advice or my support in any way I can.
