What is the difference between living alone and being alone amongst others?
The contrast is sharp.
One, an existence within walls belonging only to you. Your front door opens because you place palm on knob and turn to release the latch bolt. Then and only then does it pivot on its hinges to permit your transfer into the outside world.
The other, a moment of solitude in a bedroom of a shared house. Sounds surround you of television shows, dogs barking, footsteps on linoleum, phones singing and beeping, doorbell clanging, toilet flushing, ceramic dishes jangling into stacks on shelves, wheelchair whirring, ice cubes tumbling into glasses, showers raining onto tiles, and voices of residents and pop-in guests.
Yet it isn’t merely others’ noises that you sense from your solitude, because the modern world at large is noisy. It is their energy. Each person moves through a home carrying the weight of countless stories. We are books, barely bound, pulsing with tangible oomph and ailments as well as with suppressed or exposed emotions and thoughts.
When humans cohabitate in harmony with personal integrity intact, it is something short of a miracle.
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If there is any ideal situation in which a former singleton* lives with others, it is in my brother’s home. The bedroom suite I was given is so large it is overwhelming for one person and her cat. A window stretches across a wall, and it looks out onto a nature preserve with cottonwood, oak, and fruit trees, now bare branched for winter, allowing for an even deeper view into the forest. I have my very own bathroom.
The people living or working in this home are as accommodating as possible to an introvert’s life. Not perfectly, as we all persistently revolve around my brother and his disability, but as close to it as possible given the circumstances.
Still, I feel a longing to live alone again.
*A singleton is someone who lives alone, regardless of relationship status.
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In 2015 and 2016, essays and photographs by singletons were published through my WordPress site. We called it the “Living Alone Project.” Project, because we riffed off one another, sharing from our solo lives and coming to learn that we were part of a stunning change of customs: now more than ever before, people live alone.
Over a quarter (27.6%) of all U.S. occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940…The share of people living alone increased every decade from 1940 to 2020. --From “Home Alone: More Than A Quarter of All Households Have One Person,” by Lydia Anderson, Chanell Washington, Rose M. Kreider and Thomas Gryn. June 08, 2023
The reasons behind this uptick are as nuanced as any pattern involving humanity. But for those of us who are privileged enough to live in the manner of our choosing, common themes become visible. Es Bee, one of the project’s contributors, shared the following:
As an introvert, I never felt like I had the privacy or solitude that I craved living in a large house as the youngest child. Even though I had my own bedroom by the age of seven, where I spent most of my time when I was not fulfilling the obligations of childhood, I always had this nagging feeling that whatever I was doing in my room could be heard and observed by others. I never felt like my bedroom afforded me a sense of aloneness or solitude and always had a sense that I was being covertly “watched.” When I finally had a taste of being truly alone in my own apartment, I felt like I had finally met a part of myself that had been kept at bay throughout my entire childhood. It was like a homecoming of sorts: I had reached a place where the repressed self could be integrated into my whole being. To this day, I feel like when I am sharing space with others for longer periods of time, I look to the future when I can again be alone in my own, unshared space. It is the time when I feel most like myself. -Es Bee, 2015
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Privacy and a completeness of Self beckon to those singletons-at-heart living with others. Even now as an adult living with family, I, too, relate to Es Bee’s feeling of being “watched.” I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps it’s that energy exuded by others which flows through the home, reaches me, and I’m thus invaded.
Another phenomenon is feeling “most like myself” in a home of my own. Why is that? Am I not able to set and maintain boundaries amongst others? Do I lose myself to whomever is in the environment? I’ve no idea, though the cluelessness isn’t from a lack of trying. Day in and day out, I put in the work to live as my true self in a household of people.
Look at that. I answered my own questions, with the help of a fellow singleton! When I live alone, such work is unnecessary. In the absence of commingling and collaborations, we are free to go limp, existentially speaking, and be exclusively ourselves. From this stance, we return to the outside world with its work, communities, and boundless oceans and skies.
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John Ashbaugh, another contributor to the Living Alone Project, wrote about his solo mornings:
Now having passed through a night of full moon, Dawn comes from behind the horizon of our mountain range, then threads her way through the fractal universe of cottonwood branches to then tumble her way through my kitchen window onto my white adobe walls. -John Ashbaugh, 2015
Someday, I hope to return to those moments of deep noticing. I imagine them providing energy refills for visits to my brother’s house, ready to be of service in a more focused way outside of my own nest, which stands still in time in my absence, untouched, empty, and quiet.
This is Part One of Not-Yet-Sure-How-Many.
As the world continues to lose its mind, here’s to doing what we can to lessen the pain while remaining loyal to ourselves.
Keep your chin up, keep pedaling.