Dancing with myself

the intense joy and pain of traveling alone

Hello…

I am frankly embarrassed to be posting after so many weeks of silence. I misjudged how my creativity would manifest while I resided in Tallinn. It was my hope that I would feel endless amounts of time and energy that would lead me to finally get the chance to tap into some concepts I am eager to get on the page. The opposite happened. It became a period of quiet reflection. The same emotional rawness I mention in the following piece made publishing words feel too risky. Now I am home, I am processing it all. I am committing to getting this essay off my desk and into the world and hoping it nudges loose the paralyzing writers block I seem to have entered. I hope it resonates with some of you. Enjoy!

Last night I shattered the edge of my comfort zone when I attended a concert alone. There is a rawness to traveling alone in a foreign country that I can best describe with the word “exposure.” Company, travel companions, concert buddies, they serve as shields. They protect us from the outside world. We can turn to our friend in a crowded venue when we need reassurance. Humans are social creatures, it is apart of our primal survival instinct to belong in company. This line between pleasure of companionship and dependency on it is so blurry and unobserved in our society. The joy of genuine connection is insurmountable, but it is when we remove those connections that there is something powerful to tap into: we learn to find sufficient company in ourselves.

We are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. In a world where we are more connected than ever through photo-sharing, video-posting, and wifi strong enough to instantly transmit your face and voice to someone on the other side of planet. There are essentially no longer any barriers to reaching people. Ironically, the lack of barriers have left us complacent. Without much effort required for contacting others, I suspect we are losing an ability to connect with others. I believe a lot of us have lost the muscle mass the vulnerability of writing a letter, calling a landline or ringing a doorbell used to build. This vulnerability is the piece of the transaction that creates a sense of connection between two people. I do not write this from a place above the phenomenon. In fact, I am fascinated by loneliness because I am a small data-point in this epidemic. My go-to during depressive episodes is to self-isolate, even though I know better. The sneaky thing about depression is that you can have all the self awareness in the world, and still when it creeps in, it deactivates all the desire to pursue the very actions that push this intrusive invader out of your mind, body, and soul. However, there is a difference between isolation, and solitude. One we feel victim to, and the other we chose to engage in. The agency is what gives us the power in two parallel scenarios.

I believe my fear of being alone is the very thing that makes it feel alluring. I have always identified as an extraverted person. Being around the right people makes me feel safe and valued. As a child, company made me vibrant. As a teenager, I learned to abandon myself and conform. My space in the company of the people I identified as friends always felt like a privilege granted to me rather than a space where my occupation was appreciated. I believe I am still healing from the insecurities of those formative years, and solitude is a manner of finding that healing. I don’t think I would ever have learned how much I can adore myself, if I never created the opportunity to get to know that self through long periods of solitude. We are socially conditioned to be modest. To claim self-adoration causes flashes of Narcissus gazing at the water below him, but adoration is deeper than the surface reflections of self. It is an inner warmth. It is the way you can keep company with yourself- mulling over experiences, uncovering layers of self-knowing, and lighting up in the humor of day to day life. When we are removed from familiar forms of external validation, we gain clarity on on our own values, desires, and thoughts.

I have a friend who refers to traveling as a period of Rapid Emotional Growth. I think of it as REG time. One of the biggest misconceptions about traveling is the assumption it is a period of glamorous ease. It is not. Traveling is fucking hard. It is emotionally exhausting. And when you are solo traveling everything is amplified. Navigating the grocery store is so much harder when you don’t have someone to turn to, just as clueless as you are to ask “So, what do you think these could be?” There are evenings when I walk by the many glamorous windows of hip eateries. I try not to stare too long at the people gathered inside, sipping drinks and sharing meals and conversations with friends. Perhaps it speaks loudly to the life I have been privileged with, but nothing makes me feel more akin to the Little Match-Stick Girl than these experiences of simply feeling left outside of all that warmth. I try to avoid walking some places at certain times of the week to abate the loneliness that comes. My husband knows to expect tearful phone calls about once a week. I call them my cry-days. Nothing triggers them, like a beaker designed to tip out when it fills, only to swing upright again to collect more. It is just a time to release the ache, exhaustion, and frustration that has slowly built over the days of being all alone in a foreign place. We find amusement in knowing that despite these calls, when I get home I will start planning where and when my next solo trip will be. It is a craving for me, because while the hardship is amplified, so is the goodness.

I began a habit of getting off the tram early to walk through Old Town alone anytime I was heading home after dark. It was March, not exactly tourist season in Estonia. So the cobbled streets laid mostly empty. The lights above the old wood doors reflect off various paint colors. Shops are closed, some restaurants are open, but they feel sleepy with just a few patrons in each one if any at all. The old medieval structures are lit at night, amplifying their resiliency as they stand unmoved in an ever-modernizing world. These evening walks alone make me feel alive. There is nothing more romantic than experiencing the beauty of one of your favorite places all alone. It sounds ridiculously simple, but to know that you can be alone and be ok is empowering. Possibly the most empowering truth I have learned so far in my own life. Many of the most exhilarating memories I have, were experienced in times of solitude. It is not coincidence. We see and feel differently when we are exposed. Life is infused with magnificence when we make ourselves more available to feel all of it by engaging in our own inherent vulnerability.

I am fascinated by the space between isolation and solitude. 2022 was a challenging year. In many ways I felt more isolation than ever before in my life. Sometimes I wonder if it may all have been to prepare me for this residency. To be so alone in my home city that I realize I have never felt home in. However, with some hope, I remind myself that isolation is often in tandem with transition. It is hard to see it in ourselves because we are so entangled in our own experiences. But I see it clearly in the women who I love the most: the friends who have inspired me the greatest throughout my life. The friend who dropped out of college to move to a small mountain town, when everyone said she needed a degree. The friend who is about to welcome a new baby into the world, as a single mother when everyone said she needed to find someone first. The friend who knows that enduring loneliness is temporary, and less painful than the emotional abuse of an unsupportive partner. The friend who is consistently pursuing her passion regardless of finding herself in unsupportive spaces. The friend who has chosen to endure lonelier work days rather than to continue shrinking her magnificence in order to be accepted by colleges with shallow values. There is a common thread of them choosing themselves, of choosing a time of isolation in order to enter a new place in life. Each time a decision like this is made, our society becomes a little stronger. Change is not possible without isolation. Imagination is not possible without solitude. Progress- personal and societal is not possible without loneliness. A table must be built before others can be invited to sit at it. In the ease of a neatly packaged metaphor, we forget that to build something is a time-consuming process: It is an investment. It is confusing. It is labor. It is trial and error. It is lonely. To be alone in a world where we have been socially trained to be dependent is revolutionary. If the women mentioned above were not comfortable enough with loneliness to abandon the social norm long enough to find their own way, nothing would change for them. Their example would never ripple consciously and unconsciously though our communities. They walk taller, even on the days when they question their decision to stray. Their presence in the world serves as an example of living an intentional life. Their actions blaze trails to be followed. It gives others permission to say “no” to the containers they feel comfortably trapped in. These women are shaking the earth.

I never anticipated that the hardest part of going to the concert would be finding a place to stand. Pushing through people in an old warehouse retrofitted into a concert venue all alone is strange. Knowing where to stop pushing and start watching the show is like revealing to everyone that you just feel entitled to stand in their space, you weren’t meeting up with friends after all. It’s the epitome of loneliness, to reveal to strangers, clustered with their people that you don’t know a single other person in this packed space. But that is where the magic comes in: to feel uncomfortable and do it anyway chips away at our insecurities. The lights and sounds are intoxicating. When you have nothing but the music to interact with, your body feels more sensitive to the vibrations moving through it. I danced and moved all alone, and still connected to everyone else in the venue. The rhythm threaded us all together, emphasizing our humanity for just a few moments the way only art seems capable of doing. And as fleeting as it is, a truth rings out so clear that we are both always and never alone. To see loneliness as amorphous and fluid removes its ability to be a barrier. For that fleeting moment, everything feels possible.

With love and awe—

Kirsten