Being alone
Depending on the season, my little self was more often than not curled up on the couch reading – or in the industrial kitchen at my parents’ restaurant, burning the pads off my tiny fingers – or standing in pouring rain under the broken eaves-trough at Uncle Ron’ s ramshackle house – or maybe tucked neatly into our backyard zucchini patch inspecting the specimens.
Most people are surprised to learn just how introverted I am. That I can stow away in my apartment for whole long weekends in the quiet, maybe venturing out for a walk or market trip or book and coffee, but often not even. I like to see movies alone, and lunch as one in a pretty dress, and sit in the park on a blanket making up love stories for the squirrels. I’m a lot like my little self, actually, who went about things deliberately and quietly and alone.
Time and time as one has been in my thoughts quite a bit of late.
My sister moved out recently, but a point of contention when we lived together was my need for silence and space. It was difficult for us both to deal with this – she wanting to dive into our days as I walked through the door, me seeking a few minutes space before dinner as repos. I get her frustration – I probably would be, too. Trying to articulate to someone you love that you just need time alone after a day spent in constant communication seems selfish, and perhaps it is.
I love cooking whole dinner parties, but there’s something special about a meal for one. I have a well-thumbed anthology of essays called “Alone in the Kitchen with Eggplant” that documents the act of dining in solitude. Some folks are totally averse to the idea: Laura Calder goes so far as to say one should never ever eat alone if it can be avoided. But I find great comfort in cooking for one – knowing what I prepare is exactly what I want, no compromises or fretting because I’m eating avocado on toast for the fifth night in a row. Setting the table – one spoon, one fork, one knife, one pretty napkin, one tealight – has a nice ritualistic sensibility about it.
At big gatherings, my family is used to their niece/daughter/granddaughter/cousin who slips out to the porch or up to a spare bedroom or away to the kitchen to methodically rinse dishes. A friend suggested to me that this isn’t introversion at all – just sensitivity to loud voices and noises, but I think the two are inextricable. Space, to someone who seeks solitude, is necessary, sacred – and can be invaded in many ways. My Greek relatives live loudly and tactilely, ruffling hair and pinching cheeks and clinking glasses and sparring about politics – and I love this. But it’s life lived without a space barrier, be it physical or acoustic or imagined.
There are exceptions, sure: I love spending one-on-one time with a close friend. Dinners in and out, exploring, long walks, conversations on the couch with glasses of wine or steaming mugs of tea. The best company in the world, I think, is sitting in an armchair reading, with a favourite person close-by – each of us doing our own thing – occasionally looking up to smile or share a passage. The welcome being of quiet company. Feeling someone around without words, indulging in the reverent dead air.
“In solitude, where we are least alone.”
I realize – and I grapple with the idea – that I’ll never be able to force myself to be happily busy-bodied or to embrace a packed schedule. Nine of ten times, I am heading home after work to my pyjamas over dinner and drinks. I’ll always need a little space when I walk through the front door on a weekday night. Surely there are more of me out there, who embrace this idea of being together, alone. Or sometimes just alone.
[photo via]
Much like you, I like my alone time. School and work aside, I seldom venture out of my home unless it’s to address a craving (usually for candy). Since I live with my dad and my brother–who often has several of his friends over, sometimes for several nights in a row–I particularly cherish those days when my dad is at work and my brother is at school (or doing something outdoors in the summer months). I love to just spend time reading.
I work as a front desk attendant, a position probably classified as customer service, at an art gallery. My introversion means that, unlike my coworkers, I can be somewhat brusque when dealing with people–never rude, but more functional and less fluffy. This stems partly from a dislike of social dissemblance, of faking emotion for the sake of being sociable, and partly from a genuine disinterest toward other people’s doings. Dealing with people is my least favourite part of my job and a part with which I continue to struggle.
The Internet does curious things to introverts. While I avoid social situations offline, I’m quite gregarious online (as you can see from my comment). This has nothing to do with anonymity; I’ve abandoned any claims on anonymity as both pointless and counterproductive. Rather, the Internet is a medium that suits introverts, especially those of us who have strong literacy skills. Although I’m an articulate speaker, I find writing a far superior means of communicating anything in length. Thus, I prefer the Internet’s textual means of communication over telephone or face-to-face chats. I do make exceptions for friends (I love using Skype to video chat with friends who are away for university).
Another advantage of the Internet is that I can multi-task. This includes carrying on conversations with multiple people. Try doing that in person!
My ruminations about my different approaches to online and offline socializing have helped me realize a possible reason for my introversion. It may be an arrogant one, but it seems to fit the facts. I dislike socializing because other people are slow–not in an intellectual sense, but simply from a communications perspective. When people attempt to tell me something I already know, I can get impatient, because it’s a waste of my time (if it’s a revelation, on the other hand, I’m happy to listen). My dad is usually on the receiving end of this rude behaviour! Oral communication is such an inefficient way to transmit information compared to written. I can control the rate at which I receive information (by varing the speed of my reading); I can’t control how fast people talk. Although the Internet burgeons with more than just text, I usually prefer text over video for precisely this reason.
And this is why, to be honest, I prefer books over people. Books furnish me with information from other people, but with several advantages. In addition to being able to read a book at my own pace, a book is a more polished version, in comparison to an impromptu oral delivery, of any argument its author wishes to convey. Books can be indexed and easily reproduced. People can’t. The next best thing to reading a book is discussing a book with other people!
As I grow up and begin to confront the world one-on-one as adult-to-adults instead of child-to-adults, I have to reconcile my desire for solitude with the pressures of socialization. I want to be a teacher, which means something like a 9-5 job, five days a week, plus any extracurriculars (the summers off are nice though). My trepidation about working full-time in the summer indicates I’m not certain a 9-5 job is for me. I remain hopeful that my enthusiasm for teaching will make an eight-hour workday more tolerable than eight hours of attempting to find work to do at a small gallery.
Sometimes, particularly after having to interact with people for a protracted period of time, I evince a desire to become a hermit and spend my days reading books. Aside from the financial impracticality of such a venture, I would genuinely miss out on some parts of society. I often joke about living my life vicariously through others–true, to an extent–but so far I’ve managed to remain asocial and avoid becoming antisocial. Still, I wonder at which path the next decade of my life will take. Will I move out and live alone, isolated except through work and perhaps family and close friends? Will I somehow become more extraverted, or at least less averse to socializing, and expand my circle of friends? Will I meet a nice girl and enter into a long-term relationship (a stretch of the imagination, but at least possible from a statistical perspective)? A lot of this depends on choices I make, of course, and that’s what intrigues me the most: I’m not sure particularly how I would choose. And so, whichever of my myriad futures takes life, I’m quite interested in seeing how I play it out.
Even for extreme extroverts like me, being alone is very important. It gives us time to recuperate, to evaluate, to understand who we are in the context of where we are physically, mentally, and emotionally. There is a peacefulness and serenity to solitude that even the most outgoing and gregarious person seeks regularly.
I was most struck by this passage:
“The best company in the world, I think, is sitting in an armchair reading, with a favourite person close-by – each of us doing our own thing – occasionally looking up to smile or share a passage. The welcome being of quiet company. Feeling someone around without words, indulging in the reverent dead air.”
Even an extrovert like me will admit that there are few joys in life more wonderful than simply being able to share in the presence of someone you care about — each of you lost in your own thoughts and own activities, but comforted by the remembrance that the other person is only a quick glance, a quick smile, a quick chuckle, or a quick warm and loving thought away.
i’ve been away too long. this post reminds me again just how much i enjoy your blog. and the previous two comments express exactly how i feel too.
beautifully written.
Thanks, Lan. And likewise. I love seeing you come across my reader.
[...] Being alone (July) I like to see movies alone, and lunch as one in a pretty dress, and sit in the park on a blanket making up love stories for the squirrels. I’m a lot like my little self, actually, who went about things deliberately and quietly and alone. [...]
[...] Being alone (Maria Pontikis) “The best company in the world, I think, is sitting in an armchair reading, with a favourite person close-by – each of us doing our own thing – occasionally looking up to smile or share a passage. The welcome being of quiet company. Feeling someone around without words, indulging in the reverent dead air.” [...]