On Being Alone

Ever since I can remember, my relationships have been, for lack of a better term, collectively dysfunctional. My parents are divorced and while I don’t particularly blame them, I feel like this fact is partially responsible for my descent into… into god knows what this is. This refusal to be by myself.

It’s ridiculous, really. My childhood was brimming with people and love. I was surrounded by light and happiness for the most part, and while the occasional incongruous memory surfaces, time is the distance that helped me control them – with every passing year, although they remained just as potent, I learned to lock those painful remembrances down. I tell myself that this ability to control myself (or my inability to deal, whichever you want) is a talent I must hone.

I’m not a particularly daughterly daughter to my father. A few years ago there existed someone I might’ve been a better daughter to – but for reasons I don’t feel like going into now, that didn’t work out. Another relationship axed. Over the years my mother has become my clichéd “pillar of strength,” but I don’t like leaning on people (or I do, but I don’t trust myself not to lose them, so I don’t let myself lean). I cannot really distance myself from her, but I have moved away for college. With every visit, I feel like we have less in common, less that we agree on.

On the whole I prefer male company. Girls are unintelligible, because we are so varied – unless I can find some part of myself in a girl, I can’t bring myself to spend time with her. And it is rare that this happens. Boys, on the other hand, are more or less cut from the same cloth and stitched with the same color thread. If you can make a man laugh, are willing to show a little skin, and make him feel more capable than you are, you can bend almost any to your will. I know this from experience. This is why men are so easy to be with. They are easy to understand.

I like having a love interest. One you have found one, given my understanding of boys, it is not hard to be his love interest – it is finding one suitable for the position of yours that is the trouble. My love interests are the most stable men in my life – which is simultaneously why I always need one, and why losing them tends to be detrimental if I can’t find a replacement asap. In general, I can tell when it is over. Most of the time I will make the break myself. This allows me to be in control. This is also why it sucks that I was not the one to do it this time.

With no preparation to be alone, being alone is sucking more epicly then I have ever imagined being dumped would suck. Obviously my ex is an unsuitable love interest, and living with my mother the whole summer isn’t going to give me much opportunity to find another. Dilemma? I think yes.

The answer is simple, in theory. I need to learn to be alone. It should be easy. I can do alone everything I’ve done with someone else. Going to movies, or grabbing a coffee – these things don’t require a man. Pshaw. My problem is being alone when I’m alone – in my dorm room when my roommate is in class, or at night, in bed, knowing there is no one wanting to hold me. Knowing there is no one I want to be with who wants to be with me. This is what I need to learn to be okay with.