30 Things I've Learned: #5

- Live Alone.  

This one seems about as self explanatory as "don't buy cheap champagne".  

I've been out of college for 9 years. I've lived alone for 4 years, with a boyfriend for 4 years, and now with roommates for 1 year. The progression went like this: alone x 2, bf x 4, alone x 2, roommates x 1.  Both stages of living alone were vastly different. The beginning years I was early 20's and spent nearly as much time going out as I did at home. However, at 21 I was still making sure my rent was paid on time, my apt was clean, and I had groceries.  I was 4 hours from home, so far enough that I had to survive on my own but close enough that my mom could come save me if need be (thankfully she never needed too). 

The middle two, those were the defining alone years. Both I've documented thoroughly in this blog. One of the years I also was out more than I was in, but I was forced to divide a household, coordinate a cross country move, pack a house, and drive a UHaul all on my own. The next year I was 1000 miles from home and alone. Completely.  I already knew how to pay bills, clean, make myself healthy food, and all of the other "adult" tasks. This time it was about learning to be alone - with myself. No one else. I learned to be okay with the quiet, to find things that entertained me beyond television.  I learned to go to bed early, to stay in on weekend nights.  I learned to view my home as a sanctuary, rarely inviting people over, never posting my house on social media.  I took pride in the privacy. I found comfort in the solitary. 

Living alone. Something I used to never want to do,  always convinced when I turned my back to the door an intruder would be standing over my bed (I grew up with dateline being my bedtime stories, paranoid much?). But living alone has taught me my greatest lessons, both from a practical sense and in overall life lessons. Being alone isn't being lonely. And being lonely isn't being alone.

During my time alone I learned who I was.  And sometimes that wasn't a great person.  But those were the times that motivated me to become one.