The Power of Being Alone: A Pandemic Lesson

The Power of Being Alone: A Pandemic Lesson by Brianna Milano

Brianna Milano is the LiveGirl Social Media and Community Impact Leader

Taking a step back now, as we are far past a year of living in and through a pandemic, I have had so much time. That is the key word here; time. For days, weeks, then months, and then a year, I had the time to reflect on myself and the experiences I had to set aside as a college junior and senior due to living through a pandemic. 

I recently just got back from studying abroad in Rome, Italy, where personal space was non-existent and I was traveling to a new country each weekend for 5 months straight (literally the complete opposite of what pandemic life was like). I got home so excited to reconnect with my friends, family, professors at school, etc. It was within no time that all of that was turned away because of COVID-19. I remember thinking how cool it would be to have an extended 2-week spring break, but part of me deep down knew that this could be no good in the long run. I just had that feeling. People were hoarding toilet paper, stocking up on bleach, and we had to wear masks. What good could that have possibly brought? 

At the beginning of the pandemic I hated life. I was miserable, moping around the house, complaining, annoying my parents. I hated not being able to go do what college students normally got to do. I missed my sorority formal, all of my senior year activities that were tradition, concerts, festivals, everything. How could a 22 year old ever move past all that… It wasn’t until one of those moments you see in a movie where the light bulb goes off on top of a person’s head did I realize all the time I had. There were things I had been putting off for MONTHS because I just honestly never had the time to do them. I wanted to learn how to master a perfect brownie recipe, deep clean every inch of my bedroom, and finish that book I neglected for about 6 months. 

Looking back now on all this, I’m grateful. Of course I’m sad that I didn’t get to do all those exciting things, but that is just the way life goes. Dwelling on it only makes matters worse. I’m grateful for the health of my friends and family, but also grateful for blossoming into the person I am today. I learned to value the time I spent with myself, doing things that made me happy inside. And with that, I think I matured over this past year. I learned how to be okay with being alone, how to maintain friendships in what seemed like an impossible time, and not to dwell too much on what I was missing out on. 

I learned that I loved laying outside by the firepit with a good book and my dog. I learned how to make basically every dessert imaginable. I also eventually learned that I loved to be alone. This being the most important, yet shocking and hardest realization I had. I literally loved to be alone, so much that it became really hard to get out of that headspace once the pandemic restrictions started to lift.

I eventually went back to school, this past year was my senior year, and as my friends wanted to start to go out and do things again, I just didn’t really have it in me. Who was I? The bubbly, extroverted girl (in which my parents attest I can make friends with a wall), turning into a homebody who wanted to just lay home and just be alone. I always longed for these days, my senior year with my best friends at my dream school, but after being isolated for so long, I genuinely just really enjoyed doing things by myself. 

What’s super important here is to know that this is okay. Feeling like you want to be alone is completely normal and fine, heck, we were just locked up in our houses for MONTHS! But, we should also set boundaries for ourselves, that continuing to lock ourselves up might do more harm than good. I am an advocate for snuggling up in bed with your favorite book, but also I learned that going out and getting comfortable with being reconnected with socialization is healthy and normal. 

I like to find a balance between the two now, this is what seems to work best for me. I will go and do things with my friends for a few hours and then once I start to feel a bit drained, I know my limits and I recognize them. I understand if you’re out in the middle of somewhere with a group you cannot just pick up and leave, but you can explain that you might head out earlier than later -- which is OKAY. We are learning how to reconnect and emerge from what seems like a traumatic year. It is going to take some time to fully be ready. 

I think what I really started to understand about myself and my strength within was simply that I was okay. For the longest time I struggled with doing things by myself. I was known as the girl who always had a friend with her, who was always out and about, always just emerging in big groups. And not to say that any of this is bad, I just never understood how people enjoyed being alone until I experienced it firsthand. My friends and I always imagined that being alone just meant you’re lonely. 

Boy, were we wrong...

I read this quote somewhere a few months ago and I think it sits very well with me. “What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be”, and that’s just the plain, simple truth. Hold on tightly to the things you discovered during the past year. We changed and we learned so many things about ourselves and we shouldn’t let those be shadowed as we return to normal life. Value the time you spent with yourself.