The first time I went out for hotpot alone, the pot — sized for two by default — arrived steaming, and there I was with a single pair of chopsticks. The waitress glanced at the empty chair across from me, then back at me, with a look that bordered on pity. Like, "poor thing, must've been stood up."
And do you know my first reflex? Pull out my phone. Tap, tap. Open something, scroll something, anything to look busy, to look like I was waiting for someone, like I wasn't really sitting here alone. I fake-texted a person who didn't exist, just to make the table feel less empty.
Ten minutes in, I caught myself and almost laughed. Who was I performing for? The waitress was busy running tables; the people around me were minding their own pots. Nobody had a spare minute to judge me. The only person bothered by me sitting alone, it turned out, was me.
I put the phone down. Picked up a bite. And strangely, it tasted good.
The phone as a shield
I kept thinking about that reflex to grab the phone. Why did I need a shield?
Because when there's no one across the table, no conversation, no screen to glue my eyes to, all that's left is me and... me. Me and the thoughts I usually run from. The unanswered email. The question of what I actually want. The unsteady feeling I shove to the bottom whenever I'm busy.
We're not afraid of being alone because we're afraid of quiet. We're afraid because quiet forces us to hear the voice inside our own head. And that voice isn't always easy to listen to.
The phone, the feeds, the podcast running all day — half the time it isn't entertainment. It's how we cover our ears so we don't have to sit down and have an honest talk with ourselves.
Loneliness isn't the same as being alone
There's a confusion that took me a long time to untangle: loneliness and being alone are two completely different things.
Loneliness is a feeling of lack. It's an emptiness asking to be filled. You can be lonely in the middle of a crowded party, sitting right beside someone and still feeling cold. Loneliness has nothing to do with how many people surround you. It has to do with whether you feel connected.
Being alone, on the other hand, is a choice. It's the space you set aside for yourself, and you feel full inside it. Nothing missing. Just you, and the relief of not having to perform for anyone.
Loneliness is when you can't stand the absence of others. Solitude is when you can savor the presence of yourself.
Once I understood that, eating alone, watching films alone, sitting in a café alone suddenly meant something else entirely. I stopped reading it as a sign that I had "no one." I started reading it as a date. A date with the one person I'll have to live with until the very end: myself.
The freedom of needing no one to fill the gap
And here's the most satisfying part.
When I go out alone, I'm absolutely free. I can order it tongue-burningly spicy without checking whether you can handle spice. I can sit through the credits to the very last frame. Change my mind last minute, linger another half hour, leave early — all of it is mine to decide, no negotiating, no reading anyone's face.
It sounds trivial, but it taught me something big. Once I knew how to make myself happy, I no longer needed another person just so I wouldn't have to be alone.
Knowing how to be alone, it turns out, is a quiet kind of power. It means you never have to settle out of fear.
I won't pretend being alone is always fun. There are evenings I eat by myself and still wish someone were beside me. That feeling is real, and I won't deny it.
But I've stopped running from it. I'm learning to sit with it, take a bite, take a sip, and be okay.
Before we can love someone else in a healthy way, maybe we need to learn to be our own gentlest partner first. The one who takes us out for the food we love. The one who stays at the table with us, even when it's set for just a single pair of chopsticks.