How to Be Okay with Being Alone
By Morgan Pedro
I can remember many moments sitting alone in my freshman dorm room, on the phone with my mom, tears streaming down my face, taking deep breaths to calm down.
“I just feel so alone,” I remember I would say to her.
It had reached the point where she often had no answer for me.
Here’s the thing. I had never been alone throughout my entire life. Not once. Sure, I was left home alone when my parents went to run errands, went on weekend getaways, attended my brothers’ soccer games…but I was never truly alone. I had my room I had inhabited since childhood. I had my dogs and their neverending barking in the protection of our home. I had a home that had truly been lived in by my family. I had a familiar home whose every inch I had explored and knew like the back of my hand.
Now here I was: at a new school, in a new dorm, with daunting, white brick walls. For me, there was no sense of home here. With each day, my discomfort grew. I had to be around people constantly. I was draining my social battery below zero everyday and never recharging it. If I wasn’t around people at all times then I would be alone. If I was alone, I would feel isolated and break down and call my mom. And when I called my mom, I felt so weak. I assumed that I was failing at being on my own, at being in college.
I was staying out in my friends’ rooms until 3 or 4 AM every night. I was making incessant plans with different people that would take up all of my time, leaving no space for school work. My mental health was in shambles. My grades were dropping. My life felt like it was falling apart.
The change didn’t come for me until the summer. I remember driving away from Villanova, with my life packed neatly into my mom’s SUV. I felt like I could breathe again. When I got home, however, nothing felt the same. My house still felt like home, but I felt oddly separated from it. My friends were still my friends, but now they all had new sets of friends at school. Slowly but surely, the missing piece to the puzzle of college dawned on me. I never allowed school to become my home.
Things I missed the most about home that I did not realize:
Routine – getting up each morning with a rough framework to my day. Whether that be going to the gym, eating breakfast and reading my emails, showering and doing my hair every morning, etc.
Meaningful Conversation – I was so tied up in a state of people-pleasing, trying to maintain as many social connections as possible, I was pushing people away. I was forgoing asking people how they were in favor of filling any silence with interesting or entertaining (meaningless) things I thought they’d want to hear (i.e. gossip, funny stories, etc.). I wasn’t engaging in the kinds of conversations I wanted to explore about life, mental health, hopes, dreams, etc. Not to say there isn’t a balance. There is. But I was not breaking beneath the surface level and forming true, long-lasting relationships.
BEING ALONE – everyone needs alone time. Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, everyone needs time set aside to recharge. I was not taking care of myself. Every task (showering, working out, homework) was rushed through or forgotten completely because I simply could not stand to be alone for that long. In my house, I could take time to myself in my room to read or nap or do anything I wanted to do. When I would emerge, I knew my family was still there, my friends had not changed their opinion on me, and the Earth was still turning.
It is possible to have all these things at school. I realized this during that summer and it rings ever true to me now. I have done a lot of work on myself and that started with forcing myself to be alone with myself and my thoughts, and making school my new home in the ways I could control.
