Waiting for others can be a self-imposed prison sentence.

A much younger version of me once wrote that she did not want to get used to being alone on her tumblr blog.

I came across the frank plea in a recent archival exercise to transcribe text posts from that blog onto record cards (trying to have less of myself scattered across the internet, lol). Unfortunately, 24-year-old Pheladi, that’s exactly what we have had to do. Not just get used to it, but get good at it, really good at it.

At the time, it would be fair to describe my loneliness as nothing more than a dull ache, felt in short, sharp pangs months, sometimes years apart. The intensity of that ache has only grown over the years, its length and breadth sometimes overwhelming and suffocating its host. I have had to get used to being alone out of necessity, out of only having myself to lean on when needed. I deliberately don’t want to say ‘not out of choice’, because I recognise that much of my aloneness is a choice. A choice rooted in a mixture of avoidance, inflexibility, insecurity, poor communication skills, extreme self-love, some bad luck and obstinacy in the face of obvious misalignment (amongst other things).

As a yearner™, year after year of being companionless was initially a terrifying and alienating reality to step into. For context, I used to be the kind of person who left the house thinking ‘today might be the day I bump into the love the love of my life’ – legit, exhausting stuff. And the person who would happily ‘wait’ when some half-hearted lover had more urgent matters to see to than I. And the person who would save experiences and films to watch with this fictional other. But thankfully, somewhere along the way (maybe when my frontal lobe was fully developed), I realised that my life was happening anyway and that I should probably take part in it regardless of who was along for the ride. The realisation came about a year or two after that initial tumblr post, when I was living in a new city and, by virtue of not having my usual support structure of friends and family, had to learn to truly enjoy my own company.

I started with a small but important ritual on Sunday afternoons, a solo breakfast or brunch date with a book or the Sunday papers in tow as my only companions at the table. I recall the tinge of embarrassment that first crawled up my throat when I asked for a table for one. Heightened by the occasional look of pity offered by the waitstaff helping me that day. But those slow Sunday afternoons catalysed the courage needed to then go on solo theatre dates, to music shows, and even solo trips in the years that followed.

Following my own whims, without much consultation, is one of my greatest freedoms. One I do not take for granted because I can only imagine how many women before me, in my bloodline alone, never had the luxury of choice. The ability or space at any given moment to truly make decisions that served their greatest good or curiosity. I come from a long line of women who have always had to consider themselves last, to wait, and to serve at the behest of others. That I don’t have to do that at all is a privilege I carry with pride. I can book the thing, eat whatever my stomach calls to, buy whatever catches my wandering eye, go to the curated experience and chat to strangers, and come back to relative peace.

Like previous posts have alluded to, being in my 30s has allowed me to shed certain identities and ‘single’ is one of them. It’s not something I overexplain anymore, or something I care to dissect at length when I interact with the people I love. It’s a fact, sure, but not one that speaks to who I am as a person or what my life looks like. I still deeply yearn for companionship, but it no longer defines how I move or feel about myself.