Some Solo Sundays

I enjoy my time alone, sometimes too much. I can even remember once in my young age (my 20s) saying “I don’t need people” and really believing it. Now I look back and see just how absurd that was. I get into these moods where I am super chatty and I feel like I have to let it run out before I can calmly slip back into my seclusion. This wasn’t something I saw for what it was until I became sober. Becoming sober helps me to more clearly identify my needs and how to address them. I realize that I actually really enjoy my community. I genuinely enjoy laughing with my people, sharing stories with my people, and having a community of people that I can be transparent with. I love y’all! It felt like I was neglecting my own need for people by forcing myself to be alone because I thought it was serving me more than my community could. Sometimes this can be true, depending on my needs and the community I’m reaching out to. However, for the most part, it was almost like I was putting myself on punishment away from people. I didn’t realize how agitated I was actually becoming because to quote Ari Lennox “I NEED people!” I thought it made me weak to admit that. I thought it made me dependent on people that likely couldn’t support me. Once upon a time, because of the community I had, this was true. The community could only show up for me in certain ways. The real needs I had weren’t being met so I started to feel affirmed in my thinking that I didn’t need people. In reality, I didn’t need those people. Now that I have and am cultivating a more valuable community, a community that more accurately represents me, I need my people! I may be able to go some time in solitude, but now that I have a tribe, I genuinely miss my people, I genuinely love my people, I genuinely respect my people, I genuinely learn from my people. I genuinely need my people. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced this pull before. Some days I still struggle to accept that this is actually normal, not what I was doing for so many years before. I do still need time alone to recover from being in social settings, but not for the same reasons. Lately, while I’ve been enjoying my time alone I’ve also had days where I really wanna share space, be heard, share a laugh. Since I’ve been on sabbatical I’ve put certain restrictions on myself that I expected to help me with showing up for myself. So when I had the desire to be in community I initially resisted it. I told myself I was just trying to avoid myself. I told myself if I wasn’t spending time alone, my growth could be in jeopardy. This used to be my truth, but I am growing *cues* Effie’s “I Am Chaaaaangiiing”* (Dreamgirls). So what, at some point, may have been a survival mechanism, with good reason is now something that still serves me in moderation, along with time in my community of loved ones for better reasons.