Living through Two Pandemics Taught Me About Being Alone

While I was alone because I wanted to be, things could be different.

Living through Two Pandemics Taught Me About Being Alone

In June, I tweeted something out to my loyal followers and the world. I said: Living through the COVID-19 Super Bowl and racism's half-time show is teaching me a lot about being alone. At first glance, this might sound sad and worrisome but trust that I did not feel it that way at all. I was being completely honest and reflective about what was going on within me at that point in time. That month, the world was dealing with the realization of what this pandemic was really about and what it meant for us individually and collectively. The world was also dealing with the unrest caused by evil violence against people of African descent in one of the largest and most influential nations in the world. Coronavirus and white supremacy were trying to outdo themselves to cause even more suffering than usual to Black and Brown people in America, and everyone was watching it happen. In that month of June, I was living in a studio apartment that I had just moved to. Staying there was a decision I made within myself the month before which was to take a break from the living situation I was in at that time. I was crashing with friends because I had to move from my old apartment in March and could not find somewhere to stay yet that met my specific needs. It was in the thick of lockdown and I was now in an apartment complex that clearly used to be a hotel, in a cramped studio with a communal kitchen. This was where I was thinking about what it means to be alone.

Again, thinking about being alone was not a sad moment or group of moments. It might have come out of a sad and terrible context, which was living through the pandemic and the struggle for racial justice, but it was not sad itself. What was happening was that I was seriously examining my life. I was examining my past, my present, and what my future was looking like based on the paths I had taken and decisions I had made up until this point. I had always loved being alone. I loved going to the theater alone on $5 Tuesdays with food in my bag and dozing off during the movie. I loved solo adventures and heaps of quiet time. My life before June was the life of a young woman who had always put herself first because no one else would. Even if some would, I did not want it because it wasn’t the same as when I did it. I wasn’t a selfish or self-centered person (I think) but it was very important to me that I protected myself and did whatever it took to ensure I was okay. I wanted to be safe and secure, and I felt like I was the only person that could do that for myself. This lifestyle was what I started to look at differently.

I spent a lot of time in my getaway studio that month. I had a great view of San Diego’s waterfront and kept myself busy with various little projects while I missed going to the movies. With that, though, there were moments where I could not leave my bed. Early June, specifically the first week, thousands of people were filling the streets to protest the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and confront the larger systems that allowed their killers bravery in anonymity. With all this happening outside, it was hard for me to even get myself downstairs to make myself something in the kitchen so I would do that around once a day. I was stuck in bed because I did not really feel like going anywhere. At the same time, however, I felt obliged. I felt like I needed to be out in the streets. That I needed to be out there first for myself, to do something that resembled taking action instead of feeling so helpless. I also needed to be out there for my communities—for women, Black folks, African folks—to declare that our lives matter even if it felt like a pointless thing to note. I felt like I needed to be out there as an artist to document our stories. As a writer and photographer, I could not help but feel like I was needed out there to make sure that our stories didn’t come from people that didn’t share our experiences. It was already happening; people were selling the shirts, selling the photo prints, making the money without having the background. So, I needed to be out there, but it was hard for me to leave my studio.

View from the studio. San Diego, California. Photo by Vayunamu

As all my personality tests will show, my fate is introspection and I might never be able to escape my self-analysis. I thought about this tough time I was going through and how it happened that I did not have anyone in this season of my life that could just hold me. I pictured myself in some person’s arms, in that large hotel-turned-apartment bed, being rocked gently and comforted. I imagined us in a peaceful silence; there is probably nothing more annoying to me than speaking unnecessarily. Basically, I traced my current state of being alone back to all the decisions, small and large, that I had made in the past when it came to letting people in. Negotiating around my solitude. Even though I am more reserved, I have always been a people person (not in the usual sense of the word). I have been someone who always attracts people to themselves and can constantly have people around. I love my friends and acquaintances and have been supportive of them as they have been of me this summer while we live through this. We have checked in with each other, exchanged all the memes and voice notes, and supported both our social media glows and breakdowns from afar. But I was still, physically, alone at this time.

What I learned about being alone was that I had never really experienced having someone that understood me as much as was possible. The thing about relationships with friends, family, and otherwise is that you do not always need to understand those you are in a relationship with—you just need to love them and show it. Friends don’t always know the inner workings of your brain; they just support you and show up for you when you need it. Family members don’t know the inner workings of your brain either, they are just meant to be there for you no matter what. Romantic partners are the same way and maybe even more because they can be people that are so different from you but opt in to loving you regardless of how your brain or your mind works. So, I weighed all the different kinds of relationships I have had and still have and concluded that while there were countless people who loved me and cared for me, I couldn’t really think of someone that understood me very well. This was the person I pictured holding and comforting me. This person would know exactly what I was feeling, from how little I felt in the face of the world’s issues to how significant I felt my actions would be at the same time. My ideal partner (who I thought I was kind of waiting for but honestly was not) would be a gem to have in a mourning period such as this one because they would be able to provide whatever I needed emotionally.

So I thought about how I found myself here, without this person. I laid out my past experiences and found that the common thread was my tendency to lean towards self-preservation. I always shielded myself from even the possibility of hurt. Self-preservation, by definition, is a set of behaviors that ensures survival. Behaving in ways that preserve oneself is all about avoiding pain and fear. And I did all I could to avoid them. I kept my distance from real, raw interactions with people, mostly romantically. I did not search out or act responsively to the possibility of a serious connection. From everything I saw other people go through and talk about, I knew it could end in tears and wanted to avoid it. However, this summer taught me that while I was alone because I wanted to be, things could be different. That was interesting seeing as I never really questioned the spirit behind my actions. While I appreciated being single and living life with little attachments, I hardly considered how things could look differently. I started to imagine myself with a partner, sharing most things from our days to our food, and how that could be a type of comfort I had not experienced before. I was used to the comfort from staying in my safe zone and living a more-or-less predictable life but 2020 has shown me that life is hardly predictable and there is absolutely no use in wasting time living like it is.

My worldview was changed, I would say, for the better. I may not have fully started on that path of opening myself up to a new, different kind of love, but I live in the recognition that that is an option, and it is a great one. Reflecting on past trauma and negative experiences is helping me as I live differently. As I choose love instead of fear.  I now recognize that if my goal is to avoid pain, discomfort, and death, I will fail on all three counts (well-put in a quote I saw somewhere online). I live now knowing that choosing people to love and let in is the closest I will get to controlling my future.

Sometimes it seems like impactful personal experiences are those that happen in interaction with another person or in reaction to something external, but I believe that those that happen within us are the most powerful. It must mean something when we are able to honestly look at ourselves and point out what we need in order to become better versions of ourselves. I can definitely say that my quarantine self-reflection came in clutch because this experience has not only changed a worldview I had but has changed my life too. I once believed that the best way to live my life was to self-preserve. However, this experience of introspection significantly impacted my understanding of self. I started to open myself up to, and am still learning about, the idea that I need to get out of survival mode. During the most unforgettable summer of my life so far, I learned that what I now need in life are connections intense enough to change my life, even if it is for the worse because it could also be for the better.