On Being Alone and Being Who You Are or Who You Dream of Being, If Only for a Night

In New York City, amongst throngs of people, we are forced into a strange interplay between anonymity and intimacy. Whether through apartment living in a spiderweb of roommates and neighbors, or our bodies pressed against one another on the 8:30am D train to Midtown, to open-office designs sprawling with coworkers, and queuing in the Trader Joe’s check-out line down two, three, four aisles, we’re often in close to proximately to others—to strangers. 

In these settings, being alone with other strangers is familiar and commonplace to our everyday routines. But when it comes to eating dinner at a restaurant by yourself, grabbing a drink without a date, or going out alone with the intention of meeting new friends and lovers, the endeavor feels daunting. Yet, New York City is the best place to spend time by yourself, wherein solitude among the city's chaos can lead to a profound experience. In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes suggests that, “[t]hough we all might prefer to have the kind of sojourn to home that is much more sustained, wherein we depart and no one knows where we are and we return much later, it is also very good practice taking solitude in a room full of a thousand persons.” 

Consider what you do to prepare for a job interview. You anticipate the questions that will be asked. You might even rehearse your responses before a mirror. Unlike a job interview, there is no way to prepare yourself for venturing out alone in the city, which is exactly why I encourage you to try it. It is both a dazzling and intimidating experience, especially when you attempt to socialize or have unexpected encounters with others. When you venture out alone, you have the opportunity to present yourself—or a version of yourself—however you choose. You may be the person whose chambers of the heart are full of rage, who eats her sins for breakfast, and who conquers and devours and resists the easy seductions of the nights. You may be the naïve person whose pleasure overrules intuition, who arrives wildly and recklessly, throwing her head back toward the stars to laugh loudly at nothing.  

You can be whomever, and discover within yourself the person you want to unfold in that particular circumstance. 

I remember one of these nights out that I had, alone. It was about two years ago. I was in my second year of law school, and my semester of working full time for a judge had just come to an end. I found myself drinking a $7 glass of wine in a corner of the redly-lit XPizza, a tiny joint in the Seaport with live DJs playing techno music, while cheesy, thick pizza was made directly behind the DJ booth. I had no expectations for that evening (albeit I was wearing my lucky shirt), but I decided I was not going to be a law student. That night, I was going to be a music lover, one with blue nails, who starts her weekend on a Thursday night, a Lilith, some psychoid of the patriarchy’s unconsciousness, appearing in your dreams just when you’ve stopped stalking her Instagram daily.

I introduced myself to a rugged man behind the bar, who was wearing clothes he designed and created. The rest of that evening led to a five-course dinner, a popstar in her luxury G-string hanging off the side of a sanitation truck, and a man obsessed with Catholicism, whose beautiful Williamsburg apartment contained an enormous collection of books, each adorned with intricate covers depicting the Crucifixion of Christ. 

It was a night I’ll treasure forever. It was a night where I discovered many things about myself, including the fact that maybe I am, at least for now, a music lover with blue nails who treats Thursday nights as the beginning of the weekend.  

You have to experience life, alone. You are too full of life to be intimidated by surrounding yourself with a room of strangers—a scenario you already navigate daily in this vibrant city.