I shared a bathroom with three other women until I was 20 years old.
My living spaces — the bathroom, kitchen, cars and at times my bedroom — were never my own. At home, I had parents and sisters. At school, classmates. After school, teammates. I can confidently say I didn’t spend more than a handful of hours without the company of people I knew until I turned 18 and set out for college. And even then, absolute solitude wasn’t a common occurrence.
What was new, however, was an absence of familiar faces.
At first, it felt incredibly foreign. Even though I identified as an extrovert due to the social overload of my childhood, I realized I didn’t have to interact with people if I didn’t feel up to it. It was perfectly acceptable to not talk while waiting outside classrooms or walking around Moscow. I would go entire afternoons without communicating with another human beyond saying “here” during roll call and “12-ounce latte, please and thank you” when I went downtown to study. It was awesome.
That’s when it occurred to me — I’d never enjoyed my own company.
It was even debatable whether I’d ever had a chance to enjoy being alone with myself. Suddenly my anticipated pastimes were no longer dinner dates, group road trips and team sports. I started enjoying those things in small doses, and instead looked forward to exploring downtown, going to the mall and embarking on frivolous drives to Troy and Pullman — with myself.
I learned a lot about myself over the past three years that I think anyone who identifies as an extrovert can glean lessons from.
First, I began actually listening to myself. According to the Cleveland Clinic, humans have an average of 60,000 thoughts per day. These thoughts vary from “what should I have for lunch?” to “how do I feel about my relationship with that person?” to “why am I on Earth?” In enjoying my own company, I started to enjoy analyzing my own thought processes. When we spend our days face-to-face with people who expect conversation, it’s hard to hear the conversation going on in our own heads.
Second, I developed an identity separate from my family and friends. Going out on the town alone was a new experience because if someone looked over at me or said “hello,” they were acknowledging me in my most vulnerable state. I was no one’s friend or sister — I was the girl sitting alone, with a laptop, sipping coffee and generally minding my own business. I couldn’t be anyone but myself if I tried.
Third, I learned to observe. My boyfriend always gives me flack for being unobservant, and I never thought his claim held any water until I began sitting by myself for a while. I could hear clearer, and somehow see clearer, too. When the attention typically paid to companions is instead paid to the cars on the street, the song playing over the loudspeakers or the children dancing on the sidewalk, it becomes easier to exist on the outside.
People should take themselves on dates. They need to be going for walks, out for coffee and into bookstores with no one’s company to enjoy but their own. Once I learned the value of being alone in a crowd, I found that I wasn’t really alone at all — I had myself.
Lyndsie Kiebert can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @lyndsie_kiebert