I was sitting on a bench overlooking the water the other day when I thought of some advice I heard.

I watched a video recently by Chelsea Callahan, the woman who singlehandedly helped me navigate the hellish ordeal of getting an apartment in New York, where she was showing you what to do with just one day in NYC. At one point, she explains that you can do all of these things alone, and that you shouldn’t let your fear of going out by yourself stop you from exploring the city.

Haha, what?

SPENDING TIME ALONE

As someone who has done nothing but explore the city alone for three months, this pried open a new perspective. I realized that we so often fail to see ourselves and our lives from other points of view, easily admiring other people for their accomplishments while barely recognizing our own. Sometimes I forget that solitude is not easy for a lot of people. I remember my first college roommate wanting me to go the grocery store with her during our first week and thinking what? Why? Every time I went to our campus market after that, I noticed that college kids were always in pairs or trios, buying their apples and vodka seltzers together. Grocery shopping was somehow a social event and it never made sense to me. But then again, most things didn’t.

And I don’t say that to put myself on some pedestal of maturity. I’ve never credited my ability to be alone to being “mature” as much as I have to the events of my life that forced me to develop that ability. The first thing people would ask me when I told them I was moving to New York was if I knew anyone there. Now here, they ask if I knew anyone prior to arriving. And I mean, it’s a fair question. When I tell them no, their eyes tend to widen. Sometimes they will say something like I never could have done that at your age.

GROWING UP

But the thing is, whatever abilities I have, I have paid for in full. My independence came at the expense of my childhood and adolescence. If I am ahead of the game, it’s only because I spent those years learning how to play it.

I have spent my entire life navigating solitude. I have memories of sitting alone in the library during lunch in elementary school, just as I sat in the sun reading during lunch in high school. There were several periods of friend groups, of parties, of relationships, sure. But mostly I just remember that feeling that sinks like a stone in your gut when it’s recess or free period and you suddenly don’t know what to do with your hands. Memories of summer and the pain each scorching day brought when I would watch my brother go hang out with his friends only to look down at my palms and find them empty. I learned to fill them with sunlight, with pieces of the sky. And later, with words. I think of that kid now and ache for how little she knew about how much it was all adding up to.

I think that people who didn’t fit in growing up tend to fair better because of it when they reach adulthood. It’s like everything flips and suddenly, it’s cool to be different and smart and to wear funky things. The traits that people ostracized you for as a kid tend to be the ones that they love you for as adult. I was always seen as weird for sitting alone with a book. My peers squinted at me and my teachers asked if I was okay. Yet now, all of the sudden, my solitude is this thing that people are amazed at? Now it is a good thing? Now people want to be my friend? I’m only here because I was there.

THE REAL WORLD

But that’s the thing about the real world, the thing they tell you when you’re fifteen as words of encouragement to survive it all. Once you reach adulthood, no one cares if you were the cheer captain or the wallflower. They just don’t.

All that matters is who you are now. And what I’ve found is that the coolest, strongest, most sure of themselves adults, are typically those who grew up on the outskirts of social bliss. They seem to know themselves a little better and care a little less what anyone thinks. They know how to be alone because they had to be and their identity is entirely their own. It’s not some ephemeral, ever-shifting entity that is dependent upon a social circle. They paid for their independence in full. If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be that you want that. You want to learn early how to be an individual. It’s a lot harder, but if you can get through it, you’ll be better off at twenty than Johny the beer-pong champ who doesn’t know that the party is going to end. People will call you an old soul and tell you that you’re great and all of these things, as if you were just born that way, but you’ll know. You’ll know that you paid for it and that it is yours to keep.

So I was sitting on that bench, thinking of that video and of how this woman was telling people that it’s okay to be alone, and I realized that I haven’t felt uncomfortable being alone in a very long time. I felt the child, preteen, and adolescent versions of me sitting inside my chest like Russian nesting dolls, realizing that I owe that to them.

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