"Being alone may not be where you become yourself. It may be where the part of you that performs being yourself finally gets to rest."
If this resonates with you, what follows may help you see something about yourself.
Seeker
I’ve been noticing this thing. I feel like myself when I’m alone. Really like myself. And the second someone walks in, it’s like I dim down. I’ve started preferring it. Solitude, I mean.
Companion
Yeah, I know that feeling. There’s a kind of relief to it.
Seeker
Exactly. It’s not lonely. It’s the opposite. It’s like I get to exhale.
Companion
Can I ask something, though. When you’re alone and you feel like yourself, what’s actually happening? Like, what does that “self” do?
Seeker
I don’t know. Reads. Cooks. Thinks. Just exists without managing anything.
Companion
Without managing anything. That word stuck out to me.
Seeker
Sure. Because with people there’s always something to manage. Their mood, the conversation, how I’m coming across.
Companion
Okay. Here’s where I want to push a little, and you can tell me I’m wrong. I’m not sure what you’re describing is being yourself. It might be being unburdened. Those sound similar but I don’t think they’re the same thing.
Seeker
What’s the difference?
Companion
Unburdened is the absence of a load. Being yourself is something more active than that. I guess what I’m wondering is whether the self you meet alone has actually done anything, or whether it just gets to sit down because the other thing finally stopped.
Seeker
That’s annoying. Because I want to disagree but I can feel that you might be onto something.
Companion
Say more about the annoyance.
Seeker
Because if you’re right, then solitude isn’t the answer. It’s just the break.
Companion
Yeah.
Seeker
Hm. Okay. Let me try this. When someone walks in, something switches on in me. Almost instantly. I start tracking. What they need, what they’re feeling, where the conversation should go.
Companion
That sounds like it costs a lot.
Seeker
It costs everything. By the end of a dinner I’m wrecked.
Companion
I’ve bumped into this in myself too. The tracking thing. It’s so automatic I don’t even notice I’m doing it until I’m alone again and it stops.
Seeker
Right. And then I think, “ah, finally, me.” But.
Companion
But.
Seeker
But maybe what I’m actually meeting is just… silence after the noise. Not me. Just no them.
Companion
Yeah. That’s the thing I was circling.
Seeker
So I haven’t actually met myself with another person in the room. Maybe ever. Or rarely.
Companion
I don’t know if that’s true for you. But it’s a real question.
Seeker
It’s a tiring question.
Companion
It is.
Seeker
I thought I’d figured something out by liking solitude so much. Like I was finally honoring myself or something. And now it feels more like I just found a place where the machine turns off.
Companion
Both might be true. The solitude is real rest. It just may not be the destination you thought it was.
Seeker
Yeah.
What part of you switches on the moment another person enters the room, and who would be there if it didn't?
If you want to sit with this question, SelfChatter's journal is built for exactly this kind of inner work.