Dear Reader,
The first few days of my cold/whatever this sickness was, I felt like dying.
It sounds dramatic — and I’m cringing at myself as I’m writing this — but apart from the endless migraines and coughing in my freezing John Jay dorm, I felt broken inside.
Nobody tells you how lonely college can feel. It’s a different kind of loneliness, something amorphous, uncharacterizable. It comes in slow waves, a dozy melancholy that looms over you when you’re on your own. But there are also times when it unexpectedly crashes over you — even when all your friends surround you.
The first two months of college felt like a blur, and while I’ve had my fair share of fun and highs and firsts, I’ve also felt extreme lows and made a few mistakes. Among them, my biggest mistake was thinking that being with someone, anyone, could alleviate my loneliness.
I didn’t know that I was merely distracting myself — using “being with people” as a momentary escape from my real problems. I was addicted to the feeling of being constantly occupied, jumping from one interaction to the next, even if that meant that I was sacrificing sleep or hanging out with the wrong crowd.
The truth is, being alone doesn’t make you lonely. And loneliness doesn’t necessarily stem from solitude.
I’ve misconstrued this notion for so long that I became desperate to attach myself to people, and I was terrified of isolation. But what I propose is not that solitude breeds loneliness but a lack of understanding about one’s self. You must belong to no one but yourself.
You must belong to no one but yourself.
This past week I took a break from socializing too much and spent time with myself. Went cafe-hopping by myself. Shopped for clothes by myself. Studied by myself. As I started doing more things independently, I slowly stopped craving for other people to distract me. It’s crazy how I was so accustomed to being with people the first few weeks of college that doing these trivial things alone became a rarity.
When I finally made peace with being alone, I no longer felt lonely.
New York grew warmer on Saturday, and my cold got better.
And I no longer depended on other people.
And I am happy, genuinely, on my own.
I am my own self.
I create my own happiness.
I am enough for me.
Sincerely,
Jisoo
