do you like yourself enough?
on solo travel and learning to love your time alone
There are rhetorical questions, and then there are questions I find hard to respond to because the answer is hiding in all the things left unsaid between us. A light-hearted example of this is the question of solo trips, most notably “What do you even do?” which is frequently the response to my little adventures.
You see, the answer to me is quite obvious: “all the things you want to do/ would do on a normal holiday”. I say this having gone on two such trips after making the conscious decision to spend more time with myself. Had you asked me a decade ago, I’m not sure my answer would be the same. Those were the days of minimal interests beyond academic excellence and escapism. My solitude was dedicated to goals that had more to do with self-preservation than genuine intrigue and finding ways to drown out the noise of an awakening conscience. Time flew by, possibly wasted. I’m looking for the alternative.
The part that’s often left unsaid is that to begin the whole ‘Eat Pray Love’ Journey, you’ve got to at least be open to the possibility of enjoying your own company. At first bite, it seems a ridiculous concept. Of course, we would enjoy ourselves; what other alternative is there, hop into another life? If this is the case, what is it that we enjoy so much? What is it that you do when you’re alone? Ask a younger me five years ago, and I would find her answers insufficient. The majority of my alone time was spent immersed in the monotonous but welcome hum of attention-stealing mechanisms like binge-watching an entire season of Criminal Minds, then swallowing ten chapters of a young-adult sci-fi fantasy as a palate cleanser.
That being said, there’s nothing wrong with both of those things; I still do them, but it was quite literally all I did when I was on my own. In the cycle of creation and consumption, I was spending my hard-sought free time gorging on the outcome of what other people spent their time making. When I broke free of that, I played the piano, but the scale was beyond tipped. I don’t know when or why I decided to break free from the pacifying lull of burying my attention in activities that rarely reciprocated, but it was probably around the time I realised my problems or worries weren’t getting better, only quieter. Immersing myself in different pages and plot lines was so appealing because my real life had the makings of a rather sad tale. I had a lot to be happy about the darker aspects engulfed any of that. The truth is, I’m not sure I liked myself very much because I didn’t know that there was anything more to me than suffering and enduring. Every achievement felt like a miracle, and I treated the downtime like stolen seconds on a broken watch instead of my right to peace.
I wanted, more likely needed, to find out if there was more to me than the process of feeling and then, in turn, hiding or shoving those feelings down. I had to get to know myself. What did I like, not just tolerate, merely enjoy, or was I comfortable with? What made my soul soar and my eyes squint? Conversely, what did I detest? What made me wish my tongue would shrivel up and cease functioning? What made my skin crawl and spine shiver?
Before we continue, I think it’s important that I confess I grew up as a picky eater, and in some ways, I still am. So perhaps it’s just my nature that makes me equally as decisive and particular about how I spend my time now. Unfortunately, when you're looking for parts of yourself you haven’t had the privilege of being introduced to, you can’t stick to the bland stuff.
So I did almost everything I could stomach. I picked up photography and took 35mm film portraits of strangers on Brick Lane and King’s Road. I went to spoken word poetry readings and took walks of ungodly lengths through London. I took myself to art exhibitions and got tours from the security guards who spent every waking moment of their nine-to-fives staring at the same paintings. I started going on dates. I started talking to more strangers. When I felt my iPad sing its sweet song of promise in the form of my comfort shows, I branched out. Turkish Shows, Brazilian Shows, K-Dramas, Italian films from the 90s, Black and White Films from the 50s, no genre was safe from my exploration. The goal: expose myself to as much stimuli in the hopes of evoking a reaction worth paying attention to. Something new but digestible, a myriad of information I could use to make a map of myself. The same way you watch different parts of the brain light up on an MRI.
It’s because of this amateur cartography that I can cautiously say I know myself. I won’t commit to full knowledge, I’ve done enough therapy to know that would be careless and presumptuous. So, how does all this soul-finding relate to solo travelling? Well, I’ve found that the more I get to know myself, alone, the less likely I am to be shocked or unnerved by the things that do come up when I decide to take that leap myself. By stuff, I mean my thoughts, my feelings, my reactions to certain environments or people I might come across abroad. I don’t think twice about boarding that plane with a ticket for one because it doesn’t feel that different to going to that party or poetry reading alone.
Now, of course, there’s the question of liking who you are without the comfort of other people. I’ll admit I’ve found this part a lot harder than the casual exposure therapy. Before sitting down to write this week’s communique, I toyed with writing an essay on the thin line between self-awareness and relentless self-criticism. Before making it my mission to expose myself to more of my interests, I would have said that I was a pretty self-aware person. I hesitate to call younger me a liar, because she was going on the information she had, but it would have been a lie. I was overly aware of all the negative, why I was more reserved, why I was so jumpy and sceptical. When asked, I could talk to your ear off about everything ‘wrong’ with me. In reality, everything I perceived to be rotting in me was inflicted on me by other people, but alas. I thought being able to confront these things in my haphazard way made me the most mature and self-aware. Naivety at its finest.
There was a summer in particular in which I found myself ruminating over past traumas that rear their ugly head whenever I feel under threat or overly perceived. It felt like two different people were living in my head. There was the antagonistic Onyi, who knew where to poke and question and torment, and the Onyi who struggled to keep up with a defence. When I fell into self-deprecatory rabbit holes and convinced myself that I was everything wrong with my past, I hated being alone.
In truth, I’ve come to realise that whilst it’s important to know all of this, there’s got to be a way to incorporate some compassion as well. With help and the gift of time that afforded me the equivalent of mental callouses to soften the wounds of rumination, I’ve begun to see the beauty in who I am. I like that I’ve grown and can now ask for help. (still working on it). I like that certain movies or songs make me cry. I like that when I get emotional, it feels as though winter is thawing. I like that I’ve overcome and persevere, but I’m also becoming comfortable with my sensitivity to certain things. I give myself the space to cry and wail, but also breathe and try again. I like that I can talk to strangers, and I like that I carry lavender around in hidden spaces in case my anxiety flares up. I like that I can learn to love myself.
It can feel quite strange to interact with yourself in this way. I often feel as though I’m splitting in two: the ego vs the id, the emotional child and the logical guide. I’ve heard some people describe it as self-parenting, and that’s exactly the way it feels. Reminding myself to pack my lavender and water, or making sure I get enough sleep as a chronic insomniac. When I go through the emotional flare-ups, I find myself talking to myself the way a pastoral figure would, using soft, objective and neutral language to ground myself in reality. I watch and observe, comment and redirect when needed. It can be tiring and boring, but the key to loving myself lies in the menial tasks I remember to do even when everything within me wants to rebel.
The more compassion I pour into myself, the more I begin to see myself the way my friends see me. I love, therefore I am kind of thing. I feel lighter and more comfortable with the darker days, and the need to drown out my noise occurs less and less. In turn, I find myself wanting to do nice things for myself. Take myself on trips unbridled by the opinions and often times restrictive needs or desires of others, for example. Taking myself on a solo date feels less like a chore and more like a coveted opportunity for solitude and true, uninterrupted peace.
A gorgeous side effect of all this is the way it’s affected my public life. Because I’ve begun to have such a good time alone, I’m even more particular about who I spend my time with. I referenced this in my last stream of consciousness titled ‘Perhaps You Need New Friends?’. Why spend time unhappy surrounded by people when I could just have as much fun by myself? After all, wasn’t it Sartre who said hell was other people? In this journey of self discovery I’ve been glad to be with others who have similar outlooks. It would take an absurd level of mental fortitude to live without the influence of those closest and dearest to you. If you’re surrounded by people who don’t truly like you for you, without strings, it can be quite hard to maintain a healthy and accurate depiction of yourself. Subconsciously, the doubt in those relationships and your ability to withstand it will have you questioning yourself and your decisions. Alternatively, being with people you find wholesome, intriguing, smart and possessed by all the good qualities you want for yourself makes it easier to see yourself reflected in them. There’s a reason it’s easier to love yourself when you can witness others loving you.
So, to the question of what I do on solo holidays, I answer: ‘whatever it is my heart desires and more’ because thankfully I’m in the habitat of listening for it. As with the last essay, this was very much a stream of consciousness because I’m still on holiday and writing this in the stolen moments between visiting a secret spring and ice cream runs. Two weeks ago, I was solo-tripping in Lisbon; today, I’m somewhere else with my family. Despite this, I hope you enjoyed this week’s essay, and I hope to return with a slightly more polished (perhaps more edited) piece for y’all soon.
As per usual, you can find me on TikTok, Instagram (daily media recommendations) and Arca (curated recommendations)