Table for one

Something I really miss about life is my ability to be by myself. In my 20s (which sounds ridiculous to say, because I was in my 20s just last year), I would spend hours by myself at cafes and restaurants and pubs, eating, drinking, reading, writing, people watching. It wasn't like I was good company. Not particularly liking yourself makes it a bit uncomfortable to spend long stretches of time all alone, with no one to talk to except for the occasional server.

And yet, I really liked these hours I had to myself. I liked the sense of just being. Not having to prepare for a conversation. Not having to wait for someone. Not having to be some version of myself.

However, somewhere along the way, things changed, and I stopped spending time with myself. Recently, I was to meet some friends and had some time to kill. And so, I went to the place we were to meet and got some reading time in. I had around two hours to myself, and the server made a comment on how my friends were late. I told him that it wasn't that they were late, but that I was early. And I don't know, it made me think about how we have become so uncomfortable by ourselves. How we are only alone when we are at home, where it's okay to be by yourself.

Yesterday, I went to a cafe close to office to have lunch and two friends asked me who I was with. They didn't mean anything by it, but it is a question any of us would have, isn't it? Eating, drinking, enjoying a slice of cake, these are things that have become moments we want to share with others. We crave company. We hesitate to walk into places unless we know we will know someone there.

One of the things about being an anxious person is that it's sometimes difficult for me to walk into places that I'm not familiar with. Even if I go to the place often, a short absence can make it quite difficult to go back. Last week, a friend shared details about an event and I said I would attend. The day of the event, my brain started its usual nonsense of coming up with excuses, but I wanted to go... and so I did.

And I was glad I did. It gave me this slight push towards wanting to do things for myself, enjoy things, live my life, and not just go with the flow or agree to other people's plans.

That night, a friend and I headed out to meet another friend. We had no real plans and so it seemed like a safe idea to go to our usual place. But my friend insisted we do something different, and so we went to a place we haven't been to before. It's such a simple thing, but often, unconsciously even, we limit ourselves to the same places and same people and same food and same drinks and we can't break out of these little boxes.

A few years ago, back when I went for yoga classes, our instructor one day told us to move our mats around and take up places we usually don't. It was confusing, disorienting, even. Because it felt like there were unwritten rules about where the regulars placed their mats. We had become so used to this that we didn't even realise how we had claimed spaces in a rented hall we spent a few hours a week in.

As adults, I feel, instead of getting to know ourselves, we hide away from ourselves. We are scared to think about what we like, don't like, what we feel, what we want. It could be because we are afraid - of learning that we haven't become the people we thought we would be; of being the kind of people we ourselves dread/dislike; of being boring cardboard people with nothing to bring to the table.

But even then, even if we are as bland as unseasoned chicken, at the end of the day, all we have is ourselves, isn't it? So we might as well like ourselves a bit more, treat ourselves to what we like, do what we want.