Your Eyes

You were the song all along.

I’m finding being alone weirdly sensual these days. Not to eroticize my solitude, but why does being the only one—onliest—feel almost sexy to me?

In the initial weeks following the breakup, being alone all the time made me panicky. You have to understand, I’ve never been alone in my adult life. Almost all of my day jobs have been front-facing customer service roles, which completely zap your social battery. But even so, after work, I’d usually see friends or take a class. Then I’d come home to my boyfriend/fiancé/husband (depending on which phase of life you’re catching me in)—someone I’d lived with from the moment I moved out of my college dorm until age 33.

Back then, I would actively seek out alone time—what my ex used to call “April days.” Days where I’d go for an aimless walk alone, usually ending up doing a bunch of random things solo. Those were the best days. I’d leave my house with no destination in mind and wind up at a movie, a museum, shopping—whatever. It didn’t matter what I stumbled upon; what mattered was that it was mine alone. I craved solitude back then—stealing extra moments in the shower, leaving the house early to take myself out for an unattended breakfast, hiding away in a stairwell at work to read on my breaks.

Then suddenly, I was staring down the barrel of copious amounts of alone time. Like a veritable ocean of alone time.

I’d never come home to an empty apartment before. My husband—who used to check in on me several times a day—now didn’t care if I made it home okay, or what I was doing, or how I was feeling. The disappearance wasn’t dramatic. It was so total it felt metaphysical. I didn’t know you could ghost your wife. It’s absurd. It’s cruel. It’s, frankly, avant-garde.

Anyway!

For a while, I filled the void in all the cliché ways—sex, going out, talking to weirdos on dating apps, occasionally some drugs or alcohol. It worked the way it needed to work, for the time I needed it to. But old patterns die hard, and I felt most comfortable defaulting into “girlfriend mode”—having someone to text and cook for and fuck.

But after ending a pretty consuming situationship last month, I finally felt ready to face my singleness head-on for the first time since everything went down.

In the ten (!) months I’ve been single, I think I’ve finally perfected the sensual art of being alone. No longer afraid of the quiet, I’ve come to luxuriate in my own company.

It’s fucking decadent.

Here are some of my favorite things to do:

I love taking my time in the supermarket, moseying through the aisles and comparing the ingredients of vegan cheeses or pita chips or whatever. I love to squeeze the produce and sniff the fruit.

I love taking walks without my headphones on. You miss so much when you’re wearing headphones.

I love getting ritualistic about my shower routine. I only use soaps that smell sexy. I sometimes shampoo twice just for the hell of it. I’ve incorporated body oil into my routine. I count how many times I run my brush through my hair.

I love eating sloppy, juicy stone fruits over my kitchen sink.

I love wearing little slips and nightgowns around my apartment.

I love spending a long time on my hair and makeup. I love inspecting my eyebrows under my newly installed makeup light in the bathroom and removing every stray hair.

I love finding new rabbit holes to get lost in for a few hours. Sometimes I’ll just pick a thing or a person to read about and spend the whole day going down the research spiral. I recently read a lot about medieval poisons and antidotes. There’s literally a Wikipedia page called “History of Poison.”

I love writing things down on actual paper with a nice pen. I love a fresh slice of paper.

I love lying in bed listening to subliminals.

I love cooking again. Hooray!

I love using all the amenities at my overpriced gym. I don’t just rush out if I can help it. I’ll go in the sauna and the steam room and the hot tub and the cold plunge. I like to stand topless in the locker room and blow-dry my hair.

I love taking myself out to lunch, especially when there’s outdoor seating that’s prime for people-watching. Note—taking oneself out to lunch is very different from “grabbing lunch.”

I love buying a big tub of fruit from Fairway and eating it while reading outside.

I love putting my phone on Do Not Disturb for no real reason other than genuinely not wanting to be disturbed while I sit around and enjoy my own company.

I love pulling all of my clothes out of their drawers, refolding them, and putting them back.

I love lying down on my couch and listening to an entire album with my eyes closed. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of music with no lyrics.

I love talking to the ghost I believe is haunting my apartment like a scandalous, gossipy roommate.

But most of all, I love that I’ve arrived at this moment. Being okay with being alone is liberating. It’s not performative. It’s private. And that’s what makes it powerful.

I’m settling into this new life. I am no longer afraid to “waste time.” What am I rushing for? All the plans I’d made—the life I carefully built over more than a decade—is gone. Sometimes you can arrive somewhere much faster by moving slowly. And, dare I say, the summer heat is making everything more syrupy. More romantic and hazy. More like a Tennessee Williams play—simmering and meandering.

It’s nice to feel safe in my own head again. This is something I’m learning about being manipulated and mentally abused: when you are lied to and gaslit to the extent I was, your abuser is training your own mind to be your punisher. Yes, they lay the groundwork for your mental torture, but the mistreatment doesn’t go away when they do. You spend a long, long time second-guessing. You lose trust in your own instincts. Their influence leaves you confused and questioning. They desecrate your judgment and perception, and it takes effort, time, and practice to reclaim your discernment.

Writing about my experience has often felt like a prison break done with a spoon. A slow excavation out of the jail of my own mind. It’s an ongoing process, but I am finally accepting that my mind isn’t a prison after all. It’s not a paradise either. A haven? A home? I don’t know.

I don’t have those answers yet. But what I do have is the space.