What Solo Living Taught Me

Hello my loyal readers!

Can you believe it is already July?!? This summer is going by so quickly and I feel like July is gonna go insanely fast and it will be back to school time. Later this month I am going to be out of the office and out of the house for an extended period of time in a year. I am going on a girls trip with my best friends to the Outer Banks, and excited to get some vitamin sea time in.

If you have been following on the blog for a while than you know that two years ago me and my partner decided to merge our lives and co-habit together. I can’t believe it has already been two years! We joked that if we could make it through year one of living together, with a worldwide pandemic going on, then we could certainly handle being married to each other.

Prior to us moving in together there were a lot of emotions that were going through me. My sister started going through a nasty divorce earlier that year, which sent my anxiety over the roof and I feared her present would be my future. I started going to a counselor, which you can read more about in Part I of My Year in Counseling posts.

Besides being a little more on the anxious side, I was also excited about the new chapter but also had a bittersweet goodbye to my years of solo living.

“I was excited and nervous for a new adventure and level of commitment with my amazing man, but I also grieved to some extent because I knew my life of solo living was coming to an end.”

When I Started Solo Living

It was shortly after my college graduation in May 2013, that I moved out for the first time on my own. Not even a week after graduation my parents and I were moving my stuff to Columbia, South Carolina where I was going to pursue a Masters in Education come that fall semester. I moved down there in May because I had a summer internship lined up at Midlands Technical College as a summer academic advisor.

I went down the day before my parents and spent the night alone in my apartment on an air mattress and in a sleeping bag. I didn’t sleep much that night because I never sleep great in new places, and because my neighbors across the street were having a big ole’ party. The closest I have ever had neighbors was when I resided in the resident halls on campus. It was more than the noise that was hard to handle that first night. It was the fact I was all alone in a town where I didn’t know anybody.

“For the first time in my young life I was truly alone. “

Now up until that point in life I had traveled with family and friends to new cities, I had college roommates that would go away on the weekends but always came back, but even then I was in a resident hall full of people and on a college campus. Being alone in my apartment that first night was a very different feeling.

I felt sad, lonely, excited, nervous, overwhelmed, and also inspired. I knew I was about to go through some major transformations as a person and individual, and that I was going to come out of the experience much different than when I started it.

What I Learned From Living Alone

My first conversations with my mom when I moved out were hilarious because I told her how hard it was to clean everything on a regular basis, and how much work it was to plan my meals, grocery shop every week, cook, and clean up everything. I could certainly understand more about why my mom kept meals simple growing up and why she always hated doing house work.

I never realized or appreciated the value of a dollar until I was financially supporting myself with paying my own bills and groceries. I quickly realized why my parents were always saying “money doesn’t grow on trees” when I was growing up. This was certainly a big learning curve in regards to personal finance for me, especially since my take home pay throughout graduate school was just a little over $800.00 a month.

My first apartment was very simple and basic because I had such a limited budget. I didn’t have a dishwasher, or washer and dryer in my unit. It was a studio apartment so it had a very open floor plan and limited space. I had a tiny bathroom, but had an amazing amount of storage with a walk in closet and huge wardrobe for my clothes. It wasn’t much, but I loved that apartment and the simplicity of it. When I moved to Georgia I upgraded to a Townhouse and it was about twice the size of my old apartment in South Carolina. Living so simple during graduate school made me really appreciate my home in Georgia.

Living alone certainly had some high and low points. I would say in the beginning it was much harder than towards the end. Being alone so much was something I wasn’t fully used to. Growing up I would always eat dinner with my family, and in the residence halls I always had someone to decompress with at the end of the day in my roommates. However, when I lived by myself it was just me in the evening from the moment I got home, until the moment I left the next day.

One of the best part of living alone was enjoying and doing whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted. If I wanted to leave the dirty dishes in the sink I could. If I wanted to not clean my apartment I could skip it. If I wanted to have a One Tree Hill marathon for six hours I could curl up and do that. It was very freeing to live in a space that I was in full control in at all times, and the space wouldn’t change unless I changed something.

“I lived alone for a total of six years before my partner and I moved in together. During those six years no matter where I was located at, I had to learn the important lesson of loving my own company.”

Even with living alone there was always a welcoming vibe in my apartment when I would first walk in after a long day. Maybe it was from my decorations and the way I made my home spaces feel homey, or the fact it was a familiar smell. Whatever it was it was comfort knowing I was in my homespace where I could rejuvenate at the end of the day.

How Solo Living Impacted My Relationship

Living by myself for so long I had to learn to really enjoy spending time with me, myself, and I. this lesson was hard my friends, but also one of the most rewarding things I could have ever learned.

Being an introvert I would usually spend weekends working on graduate work during my years in South Carolina, or watching movies or shows during my years in Georgia. I learned to enjoy my weekend cleaning, catching up on laundry, or diving into a home project. Choosing to live without roommates means I had to rely fully on my income alone, which was a challenge at times. Thankfully my parents did help me at times, however I tried to limit it so I really would learn how to budget on just my income.

When it came to managing my anxiety when my partner and I were about to move in together, knowing that I was financially independent and reliant on my own and enjoyed my own company certainly eased my mind with it all. I knew that no matter what were to happen in the future with our relationship that I would be okay.

“I highly believe that it is because of my years of solo living I am able to find joy and happiness outside of my relationship now, because I discovered how to find that happiness on my own as an individual first.”

I hope you enjoyed my story of how solo living has impacted my life, and the forever relationship I am in now.

So often we are rushing to find a person, settle down, and build a life with them. We are constantly looking for the love and validation we crave so much from someone on the outside. However, the longer I am in my relationship the more I realize just how important it was that I took the time to find and love myself on the inside before ever settling down with a person.

If you are venturing into solo living, or in the midst of it, know that this is a precious time in your journey. Take the journey and learn to love spending time with yourself. That way when you do find a person, if that is something you want, you will let them compliment your life and not complete it.

You are already whole completely on your own.

Your friend,