There’s this great song by Lake Street Dive called “How Good It feels” that starts like this:
I’m having so much fun on my own,
I wanna tell somebody
I’m having so much fun all alone,
I wanna let somebody know
How good it feels to be alone
When Side Pony, the album this song is featured on, came out in 2016, I really related to this song, the whole idea of being alone and liking being alone but also wanting someone to share that great feeling with. I liked the humor in it, the irony, the sense of wanting to share just how good you are at being alone.
I still like the song and the sentiment, but I don’t feel loneliness in the way that I used to feel in 2016, so the song doesn’t resonate with me as much anymore. I listen to the song now and think, “wow, I used to like this song so much because I really related to it, but now I listen and like it, but I don’t have a reaction to it.”
I live alone, have for years, and when I tell people that, I often get the question, “But don’t you feel lonely?” I started writing this piece trying to answer that question, thinking a lot about why I’m not lonely, but in the process of writing about that, I ended up somewhere else.
I spend more time alone than most people…I think…Like many of my narratives around myself, I wonder if this is actually true or not. I’m pretty sure I spend more time alone than most of my friends. I’m almost certain of it, but I don’t have numerical evidence to prove this.
And maybe a more accurate description of my time is I spend a lot of my time doing things alone, but I may or may not actually be alone. An example would be the bathouse, where I might be surrounded by people for hours (surrounded, ha! I mean in the prescence of people). I go alone. I don’t tell people I’m going. I probably don’t have many conversations there, though sometimes I do, long meandering conversations cuddling in a private room surrounded (there’s that word again) by sex sounds.
I cycle alone. I swim alone. I eat almost all of my meals alone, and honestly prefer it that way. I can’t be bothered most of the time to organize a group of people to do things I also only do things I want to do. I’m really finicky. I don’t like a lot of things. I like going to the movies alone. I like going on long walks alone, listening to a podcast or something.
My idea of a perfect day is going to a cozy cafe alone— spending the day drawing, reading, writing, scrolling on my phone, listening to an audiobook.
I’m always listening to something. I cannot do anything without background audio. This is not an exaggeration. I cannot get out of bed without putting on a podcast or a YouTube video. I sometimes think this is problematic, and maybe I shouldn't rely on this to function, but the reason I worry isn’t because I think it's bad. I worry that if one day there's an EMP or solar storm or something that takes down the Internet, I won't be able to function w/o audio. I'm ridiculous. This is ridiculous. Welcome to my interiority.
But I do wonder if part of why I rarely feel lonely is that I don't sit alone in my head a ton. I'm almost constantly stimulated. Even when I’m not listening to something, I’m most certainly talking to myself. If I’m alone, that’s sometimes aloud. I have a pretty constant internal monologue, and it sounds pretty similar to what you’re reading (or listening to) here. That’s the way I write these, is just thinking and writing out what comes to mind.
On a recent trip to Quy Nhơn in Central Vietnam, I realized on that other than service workers, I had barely had any conversations with anyone in-person. The realization came at the end of the trip, and I was completely unbothered with not talking to anyone, and I could have gladly kept doing it for a few more days. Of course, I was chatting with friends over WhatsApp and Messenger and Instagram, so I wasn’t not talking to anyone. I was reading a lot on that trip, mostly Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip Pullman, so I was a bit absorbed in the worlds they create with words.
But yeah, to come back to the main thing I want(ed) to explore here is that I’m someone who spends a lot of time alone, does so many things alone, and yet loneliness isn’t something I feel that much.
This has not always been true.
I used to be loney, and reading some of my diaries from university are so painful. I had great friends, loving friends, and there were many happy times, but internally I felt this deep sense of unbelonging.
I’ve written before (in some unpublished works) about how opening up Grindr or Tinder or whatever your app of choice is in Mississippi is like seeing a mirage in the desert. For a brief moment, there’s a sense of euophira, that there are others like you, others who might like you, but when you get closer to the image, you realize it wasn’t really there, and you’re surrounded by miles of dry, endless sand.
Opening up the same app in a city is like being gifted a vision of infinity.
(I’m so dramatic)
A lot of my loneliness from when I was younger stems from this sense of being the only queer person I knew. I don’t know if I’m capable yet of putting in to words how awful this feeling is, this constant sense that you are the only person like you, and that what you are is bad. Fear that if you do live as you are, you might lose your family or friends.
I started to know a few openly queer people at the end of high school, but at that time I wasn’t comfortable enough in my own identity to interact with them much. There was internalized homophobia. There was fear of being found out. Of rejection.
The apps were one of the first places where I felt seen. But when when you open up these apps where I’m from, you see that most of the men on them are closeted, and there aren’t that many anyway. And then there’s how people treat each other on these virtual spaces, which is something I want to write about in a different post.
Growing up queer in the rural America I know is this horrible mental isolation that I am unwilling to put myself through ever again. This limits where I’m willing to live to cities in progressive places. I am unwilling to break my bones to fit into a closet I have long outgrown and never really fit in in the first place.
Beyond the mental isolation, there’s also this lack of access to physical intimacy in those spaces I spent my formative years. Physical intimacy which can be so comforting. I’m not just talking about fucking, but also cuddling and kissing and handholding—sweet, romantic gestures that bring on those good, calming brain chemicals.
When I read through my diaries from university, there’s a surprising amount of loneliness and pain that I don’t remember. It’s from being in a place that, despite being progressive in comparison to much of the south, was still too opressive for me.
And then when I started coming out and living in more progressive places and meeting more queer people, I still had this adjustment period of figuring out how I wanted to be.
Being queer is such a gift for me, because I get to forgo societal norms and forge the type of life that works for me. When you’re already marginalized by society as a whole, there’s no need to conform to society’s expectations of what it means to be. All of this is made easier for me, because white, gay men are the most “accepted” of the queers.
For a while (and sometimes still), I still experienced loneliness as a gay man, because I didn’t know how I wanted to be. I didn’t know what type of community I wanted to be a part of. Many of the stereotypical activities where gay men socialize (e.g. circuit parties) are so uninteresting to me. I find them so unsatisfying. But I’ve been fortunate to find community.
I’ve been calling the past year or so of my life my Lover’s Era. Okay maybe it’s been two years. And of course there was the DP era in there for a while. Anyway, it’s been all about short romances. Maybe a night. Maybe a week. I guess it’s rebranding being a slut (positive connotation). I bring it up here because I do seek out lovers for the physical needs I have, not just sexual, but also for touch.
My most memorable hookups vary in content, but there’s this one I keep thinking about from about two years ago where a guy just asked me to lay on top of him. No penetration. I don’t think either of us came. We were clothed. He just wanted the weight of a body on top of him. And I got deep satisfaction of being that body, of providing that comfort to him.
I find it harder, so much harder than I used to, to find emotional intimacy in hookups. When I was in my early 20s, I could spend the night at a stranger’s house so easily, snuggling up to him, playing boyfriend for the night. Now I can barely share a bed with someone overnight. They have to be really special to me for that to happen.
But most of the time, my needs for physical intimacy are met easily, and for this I’m grateful. And my emotional needs are met by a variety of friends all over.
It’s much better now. The loneliness. The sense of isolation. I have friends who like the same activities and just want gentle, cozy hangs.
And knowing there are people out there like me alleviates so much angst. So much isolation.
Representation matters. Representation matters. Representation matters. Reading queer literature has been so beneficial to me. Films, too. In not feeling like I’m the only person going through these things.
I’m grateful for all the friends I have now, who can relate to my experiences, and if they can’t, are willing to listen to mine and share their own.
And I’m grateful for you, reader/listener. I have a compulsion to share my thoughts and experiences. These posts give me space to do that.
I’m also much better at being alone than I used to be. I’ve always known how to entertain myself. I’m the youngest child, and many of my childhood memories are being taken to events for my older siblings and being expected to entertain myself. I don’t want this to be misread as bad parenting. It is what it is. I always have a book with me, something I picked up in childhood, because you never know when you’re going to be waiting on something or someone.
I only depend on myself. I do not think any person in this world owes me anything. I am not owed time. I am not owed affection. I am not owed reciprocation from friends. Work is different. Life under capitlaism. Blah. Blah.
I give a lot of my time and energy to my close friends, but I don’t expect that to be equally reciprocal, and I don’t need it to be, either.
This means that I am fully comfortable doing almost every task in my life alone. The exception to this is long distance flights, where I feel a strange sense of loneliness. Those are one of the very few times in my life when I think, “I want a boyfriend.” But then I land in a city, familiar or not, and this longing goes away.
I can feel completely alone in a room full of people. Not in a negative way. In a way where I’m so immersed in my own mental world that I don’t feel the others around me. I prefer to work in a coffee shop instead of at home. I like the stimulation. I need it to focus. This must be in part of why I feel okay in cities, big cities. I want noise. I want to be around people, but I don’t need to talk to them. Ha.
I don’t really feel self-conscious either. Sometimes, I do. About specific things. My posture. If someone points something out like my dandruff, which I really have been trying different stuff to fix, but just won’t seem to go away.
But the vast majority of the time, this means that I get to spend my days feeling like myself, wherever I am, which is incredible. Liberating. Being myself. Feeling like myself. Not compromising on my own beliefs or values. Or needs.
It’s been a journey to get to this point, though. I also think this is something to write more about in a different post, but being white living in Asia means knowing that I am being perceived in most any space I go to. Walking on the street, people stare. Their heads turn. It sounds dramatic, but it’s fairly common. Just a few weeks ago in Tainan, sharing an ice cream cone with a friend, a group of students came up and starting talking to me.
I know the intention of the stares is almost never malicious, which is such an important distinction to make, that people aren’t staring because they are afraid or have some negative stereotype about me. They are just curious.
But still, it has taken me a while to figure out how I want to be living in the places I live. How to be myself. In different contexts. In different languages. How to be unbothered despite constantly being perceived.
Being unbothered. Doing what I want. This has become so central to how I live my life. I leave social situations that make me feel like I can’t be me. In a recent job I left, part of the leaving was related to this sense I was having to do things that didn’t match my own belief system in how to treat others and how I should be treated.
This feels directly related to not feeling lonely. That there’s not this need to feel like a different person, so I don’t have to feel the loneliness and isolation that comes from pretending. I don’t have to waste energy faking it. I spent too much of my life doing that already. Pretending to be straight. I’ve always only done things I want to do, but I used to feel guilty not doing things I was expected to do socially. I don’t feel the guilt anymore.
(take a break)
Thinking about this really sent me on a bit of a mental sprial. I’ve been questioning a lot of the narratives I have around myself recently. I’ve been comparing them to narratives I think people construct about me. That’s probably fodder for another post.
But this type of self-examination is sometimes distressing for me, because I see myself how I see myself, question that, and also see how I imagine others see me, and question that too. It’s a game of mental Twister where the spinner never stops spinning and the colored dots on the mat are everchanging.
I stopped writing this for a while (a few months, actually), but experience tells me when I’m this distressed about something, that there’s something worth examining.
I like being alone. I’m not lonely. What about love? What about relationships?
I worry about falling in love and that person dying. Or leaving me. Or growing old alone and suddenly realizing I was wrong, I don’t want to be alone.
Queer media doesn't help. I’ve read A Little Life twice and bawled both times. I watched Good Grief on Netflix while thinking about this topic, and it didn’t help, though I did find it a very moving piece of art. It’s very good storytelling.
Representation matters, but the representation I have is polar — A Little Life or Heartstopper. A Little Life is too dramatic for the life I want, and Heartstopper is too wholesome. Where’s the representation for boys that want to cycle in the morning, enjoy an afternoon coffee, and get bred before bedtime?
This is a horrifying realization, thought maybe it's not really a realization, but a vocalization of something I already know about myself. I’m independent, and I’m proud of that, but it’s also a product of this belief I have that I only have myself to rely on.
And this probably stops me from falling in love, from being open to love.
(am I being melodramatic?)
It’s also tied into how I love. It feels gross to self-identity as giving (feels like a red flag, lol), but it is how I am in a relationship. I am willing to give so much. Not that I lose myself. I am stubborn and unwilling to change in a lot of ways. But if I’m dating, I can give so much time towards a person.
And I worry about that being taken away.
I used to engage in longing for lost romances. I have self-identified as clarivoyant for impossible futures before, which is a dramatic way of saying I can fantasize an impossilbity so strong it feels like a reality. I used to do that.
I’ve always been a practical person in many ways, but not in matters of love and romance. But recently, I’ve noticed I’ve become hyper-practical in romance. I can stop the fantasy spiral so easily with simple reminders of we don’t live in the same city. Stopping the fantasy helps alleviate current angst, lets me live in the moment, but there’s this grander angst that builds up, this fear for future me and the loneliness I might experience if I’m much older and single.
I totally get why some people get married just to get married. I like my life. I enjoyed my Lovers Era. Sometimes I worry that I’m living from hookup to hookup, and that I’ll wake up alone one day when I’m much older and unattractive and think I made a mistake not getting hitched.
Though this all feels so silly to even worry about.
And when I really think about it, the type of love I want, the type of relationship I want, it won’t require me to sacrifice how I am, I won’t be codependent, and I also won’t require my partner to change who they are. It won’t be a love of ownership. It won’t be a love traced along heteronormative powerdynamics. It will be a mutual, supportive affection. A deep caring.
I’m rambling.
I guess the questions I’ve arrived at are am I really not lonely, or am I so good at hiding my loneliness that I’m actually deeply, terribly, achingly lonely, and I have no idea? And will my fierce independence and extreme practicality now hurt me later?
I don’t think I’m actually lonely, but as a habit I question myself, examine the narratives I’ve constructed, and see what feels real and what doesn’t. And I’m almost always open to my self-constructed narratives being wrong. When I have a thought such as, “I’m not lonely,” my response is to go, “Is that true?” and examine it.
Even after all this questioning, I think I’m okay. I feel okay. When I explore the deepest recesses of my interiority, I don’t find hidden caverns of loneliness or isolation. I find warm-lighting and steaming cups of coffee. And I find deep friendships sustained across borders by mutal care and love.
As for the second question, I do want to work on opening myself up a bit more to things the practical side of my brain defines as impossibilities. Life is strange and unpredictable. I could be more open. To love. To companionship. To not being alone.
But it would have to match with what I want in life. And what any future partner wants as well.
(What do I want? It’s not to be happy).
I don’t think I really get happiness. I’ve felt for ages that there might be something wrong with me, because I experience a pretty small range of emotions throughout the day. There’s a baseline anxiety I live with, but beyond that, there’s very little emotional movement in my day to day life. Just a flat line.
Which is to say, I’m not often happy. I’m not often sad either.
What I seek, is satisfaction. Two Mandarin words that come to mind on my ideal state of being are 充實 and 愜意. A fullness. A sense of completeness. A deep satisfaction. Very simple things give me this feeling.
Another phrase that comes to mind is 小確幸. I have a bag with this phrase on it that I love. It describes something small that brings joy. A good cup of coffee in a cozy cafe. A nice conversation with friends. A cycle with good views. A dip in the ocean. A slice of cheescake. Homemade bread fresh from the oven.
I do not seek adventure. I’m uninterested in thrills. I seek a sense of being complete, and at least for now, it’s easy to find. And I don’t experience loneliness because I feel fulfilled and seen. And for this I’m grateful. And I’m also afraid, sometimes, that it’s all temporary.
But I’m getting better and better at remidning myself that, even if it is temporary, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the now.
Wow. I don't really know what to write because I could write so much. I could comment on every line because I've never ever NEVAH EVAH read something that so clearly articulates so many (all?) of the feelings I have/had. I want to both smile and cry. There's so much here that resonates to the point of being deafening.
I have and do struggle with a lot of the same things you have and do. Ever since I was a teenager, I felt lonely in both my feelings of enjoying being alone and not understanding happiness. When I'm alone, I feel okay; with others, I feel broken on these matters. And yes to the spiralling about the internal/external narratives.
As I finish this comment, I'm crying. It hurts so much sometimes to love something that people don't understand or think is wrong. And thus so lonely because of the inability to find a partner who could share an alone-but-together life.
I identify with the desire to just feel the weight of someone.
Thank you. xo
wow thanks for the kind words. im so glad this resonates with someone (representation really does matter!) i was hesitant to share this because it almost feels too vulnerable for the internet, but your comment makes it feel worth it. 🫂