Once a week, I go on a date.
With myself.
The first time I asked for a table for one, the host hesitated, glancing at the entrance behind me, as if waiting for the rest of my group. I almost felt the need to explain myself—like I should clarify that no, it really was just me.
Instead, I sat down and did what any reasonable person does when confronted with their own company: I reached for my phone. I didn’t have anything particularly urgent to check, but I didn't quite know what else to do with myself when it became painfully obvious that sitting alone made me feel... exposed.
What I failed to understand is that the discomfort I felt wasn’t necessarily a sign that I shouldn’t be alone. It was a sign that I didn’t really know how to be. I didn't know how to just sit there and exist without trying to justify it.
And beyond that, something I hadn’t quite labeled yet: that if I sat still long enough, I might not recognize the person sitting there.
Which is a deeply uncomfortable thing to realize in a coffee shop in Overland Park, Kansas.
I tried again the next week, although I'm not entirely sure why, because nothing about the first experience suggested that I should. I went thrift shopping alone, trying on clothes I’d never normally choose, standing in front of the mirror as if I were waiting for some version of myself to feel more coherent than the one I was currently inhabiting.
Again, next week. I joined a yoga class where I wobbled out of every single pose and spent most of it oscillating between looking at the clock, then the ceiling, wondering why moving slowly felt so unnatural and whether anyone else noticed.
Another week passed, and I drove half an hour to sit by a lake at a park for 40 minutes. I’m not sure what I really expected. Some version of myself that made more sense, maybe. Mostly I just watched the water ripple and felt a little stupid for driving that far to do nothing.
None of these outings left me feeling particularly enlightened. But somewhere in the repetition of it all, I became, if not comfortable, then at least less resistant to my own company.
I think we are taught to treat solitude as something to avoid in ways that are subtle enough to go unquestioned — taught that if you are by yourself, it must mean that something is missing, that you are waiting to be included, to be chosen, to be allowed back into the fabric of things.
Social media has made this worse, blurring the line between being alone and feeling like you lack worth. From the awkward silence in the elevator to waiting your turn in the checkout line, we instinctively seek to escape the silence and fill it with noise, for fear of the accusation that we are alone.
For a long time, I think that’s what I struggled to understand. My interactions with other people became a distraction from myself. Every conversation I shared with someone was meaningful in its own way, precisely because at some point it had to end and I'd have to go home and deal with whatever was left echoing in my own head.
We often treat being alone and feeling lonely as though one inevitably implies the other, even though they’re not the same. Loneliness is the pain that comes from disconnection. Solitude is just being by oneself. Choosing solitude as young people actually helps us make sense of the jumble of goals, emotions and whatever sense of “identity” we’re trying to hold onto.
Avoiding being alone is almost automatic. We reach for our phones at the briefest opportunities. I probably unlock my phone, open Instagram, close it, open Snapchat, close that too, put it back in my pocket, only to pick it back up seconds later, as if I am unwilling to commit to either distraction or to being present.
We have made a genuine art form of filling every pause — which is a shame, because silence is powerful when we allow it to be.
When I finally managed to puncture the airtight seal of noise I had carefully structured around myself, the silence that rushed it was almost dizzying, until I realized I had truly been missing out. I finally sorted my thoughts into something resembling organization: things I was excited about, worries that I kept sweeping under the rug, and an absurd collection of shower thoughts that I probably would have more of, had I let my mind wander sometimes. Despite my insistence against my mother, it is that damn cellphone.
That kind of clarity doesn’t often present itself while I'm doomscrolling.
The paradoxical part of this whole idea, however, is that being alone is a skill — a skill that strengthens your relationships with other people. Comfort with yourself is a prerequisite for genuine connections with other people. When you’re never alone, you never figure out which thoughts are actually yours. You arrive in new relationships trying to fill something instead of adding to something. Which works, until it doesn’t.
None of this is an argument for withdrawing entirely. Human connection is still the whole point. But solitude is not the opposite of connection — it’s just the step that comes before it. The part when you build the self that shows up. It’s harder to do when you’ve spent years treating silence like something to overcome.
Once a week, I still take myself on a date. Sometimes it’s coffee at a new spot in Hampden. Other times it’s a walk down Charles with nowhere particular to be. Occasionally I like to just sit somewhere on campus where no one expects anything from me. The awkwardness of asking for a table for one has long since faded away.
What replaced it was something I didn't expect to find by sitting still: a version of myself I could recognize. Turns out she’s pretty good company.
There will always be a seat for me at a table for one.
Kripa Guaba is a freshman from Stilwell, KS. majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Economics.
