I wonder when I started being afraid of alone time. It’s been an unconscious, foreboding feeling for so long; I’ve adopted it to the point that I feel like I exist as a result of the feeling. What happens now, when I’ve grown used to relying on others? Memories of my childhood sporadically come to me. The bottom stairs I used to sit on, prop my chin on my knees to, come to mind first.
Whenever my mother wasn’t pleased with the smallest of things—skipping swim practice or not finishing my dinner—I would be sent to the bottom stairs of the basement, where I was consumed with practicing the deep breaths I learned from the pool, to calm myself down. The weighted silence when my parents weren’t talking, interrupted only by the humming of my grandmother’s emerald-green clock, reminds me of the 30 minutes I had to live alone with my thoughts. Even now, I can recall the beginnings of my inability to silence my daily worries: “Do I really need to finish my plate of dry chicken? How many more pages of Kumon do I have left before I’ll be gifted my iPad mini?” Soon, the troublesome thoughts would build to the point that I gripped my head and covered my ears as if someone was yelling over me. In reality, I was alone in the still, lifeless basement.
From below, I could hear my family through the air vents. It seemed like the filter purified every whispered thought my parents hid from me, now easily transcribed. Sitting on the basement steps alone was where the most honest of opinions and thoughts were revealed, and there was no one to carry their burden but myself.
While I heard all my parents' honest opinions about me, I only remember the worst, most self-deprecating comments: “Stop feeding her so many snacks after school. The amount of weight she’s gained since the summer is unhealthy." "Have you seen her math scores from her school testing last week? Her points are 80% lower than that of her brother when he was her age.” Hearing these things from the adults I admired most, always so doting in my presence, jolted me awake, and I began to notice the judgment of others.
As I grew older, I started to choose the basement. The ability to confine myself within its revealing nature allowed me to live with my impulsive thoughts, though at the expense of myself. The punishment of sitting alone in the basement disappeared from my parent’s means of retribution. Yet, even as I grew out of being a teenager, the tiled stairs continued to symbolize a growing fear of mine. Being alone offered me the opportunity to be consumed by all types of thoughts—my family and friends’ opinions of me, my own reprimanding voice pinpointing areas of improvement, and the judgment of people who didn’t even know me.
Alone, oftentimes I couldn’t tell which thoughts were mine, and of those, which were rooted in truth or were just self-deprecating. The darkness, and sometimes comfort, of solitude offered me delusions, whereas even now, if I’m alone for too long, I’m afraid I’ll eventually lose my sense of self. I’ve grown since, but it feels like a confession to admit that being alone reminds me not only of the fearful child I once was in the dark.
With my friends, I find myself constantly making plans to fill the void. I associate being alone with loneliness—being trapped in the basement and wondering when I’ll be able to come back up. And yet, when I overbook myself, the introvert in me feels exhausted to the point where I want to be alone for days on end. It’s hard to separate the desire to be alone from negative feelings of isolation; the distinction grows blurry. What does this mean for my introverted nature? I’m supposed to thrive off of alone time, revitalizing my personality so I’ll be able to be my genuine self once again. But minutes alone cause an internal frenzy, and I end up overthinking my abilities to communicate effectively who I am and what I like.
With my family, it’s easier to verbalize my need to be alone. As I sit in my childhood bedroom, overstimulated by the teal blue walls and swimming ribbons, I’m constantly reminded of who I was and not who I want to be. How do I tell my parents that I’m still scared of the dark, and that when they ask me to go to the basement, I’m reminded of my faults? How do I explain the reason I’m so afraid to be alone is because alone time is tainted with unworthiness?
I promise myself and others that I’m getting better. When the weather’s nice and the most prominent feeling is the way the sun blazes against my sensitive skin, I enjoy walking home alone. I find a bench by the grass and sit with my thoughts. Only then am I able to filter my thoughts to joyous parts of the day while listening to the scuffling footsteps of other students returning home.
I enjoy waking up alone, when parts of me are too disoriented to overthink. As I lay under my warmed, gray covers, the window open to let in the crisp morning breeze and sounds of the trash cans getting rolled in, I can take a deep breath and relax, reminding myself that there’s no rush on a Sunday morning.
I wonder when I’ll be able to view alone time as moments to recover from the excitements of the day. Time to reflect on the simple moments before I learned to be afraid. When will the murmuring voices come to a stop? When I’m alone, I wish for the girl in the basement to take a deep breath, find her own strength, and walk herself back up the stairs.
