What Living Alone Has Taught Me

Living alone was never part of my plan. Through my teen years and throughout most of my adult life I just never even envisioned that one day, I might live by myself. You know how life is though and things come at you literally out of nowhere and here I am, six months into living completely by myself. I cannot avoid the fact that I am now an adult (albeit not a very good one) with bills to pay, meals to make and actual responsibilities that I'm kinda getting used to now and over the past 6 months, I have learnt a lot, both about myself and the big adult world that none of us really want to enter.

BEING ALONE TOUGHENS YOU UP.

Before I lived by myself, I liked to think of myself as a strong, independent women who didn't take any shit (don't we all?) and really, looking back now, I was the total opposite. I would avoid calling the doctors to make my own appointments, I didn't do my own washing, I screamed my little pants off at the mere mention of there being a spider. Hell, I hadn't even slept in the house by myself when my parents went away on holiday! I was a needy little bitch, end of story. Being by yourself literally forces you to undergo adult rites of passage that you would never go through otherwise. Yes, getting my first huge spider out of my house in a jar may or may not have taken me over 45 minutes and I may or may not have discovered that I'm such a bad cook that I fucked up making tinned tomato soup in the microwave (don't even ask) but living alone has made me face things that I wouldn't have and now? I actually am tough(er) and can handle situations I never thought I would have. I even had the courage to get a spider out of my work the other day that no one else would go near - who am I and where has Amy gone?

HOUSE WORK IS THE DEFINITION OF HELL.

Okay so I thought I was a relatively tidy person before I lived alone. I thought I took my cups away, I cleaned up after myself and I wouldn't have any problem with keeping a house tidy. Boy oh boy was I wrong. I'm the messy one who leaves plates out and spillages and puts off emptying my bin until it is actually embarrassing. Someone actually came to my house and said "you know Amy if the police came in here for any reason they'd worry about you because these cups of tea have been left here for so long." Yep, that just about sums it up. 

YOU WATCH A LOT OF NETFLIX.

Thinking of just a day without Netflix sends chills down my spine. If you think you're addicted to Netflix now it's nothing compared to when you live alone. It's too easy to sit back on the sofa with a cup of tea and BAM before you know it you're four seasons deep into RuPaul's Drag Race and it's 3am (not that that has ever happened to me of course...) You get in from work and you're by yourself and although the silence is nice sometimes I find myself with the TV on a lot, even when it's just in the background or music on constantly. It's much more comforting to have a bit of sound in the house, especially on a night time and I've made my way through more movies and TV series than I feel comfortable admitting! You also get very invested in said TV shows too (*ahem* getting teary at Drag Race has become a habit of mine).

THERE ARE MANY, MANY SMALL ANNOYANCES.

Like going to the shop to get milk and being so unorganised that you've bought everything but milk. Like getting up in the morning and realising there's no teabags and getting even more annoyed than usual because it's entirely your fault with no one else to blame. Like thinking you're on your adult a-game until you realise that you haven't got a scrap of toilet roll left in your house. You get the picture. The things you take for granted when living with someone else or with your parents suddenly disappear. You know that towel you knock on the floor and leave? Well, that towel will still be there in the morning unless you pick it up. I know right, how did we take mums walking round the house tidying everything up as we whirlwind it away for granted?

YOU LEARN HOW TO BE ALONE.

When you live with people, whether it be a roommate or a partner or your family, you're never really alone. There's always someone lingering, someone else's shoes left on the stairs, someone else's dirty dishes in the sink. If you lived in a house like my family's with a lot of people and a lot of animals, you get used to there always being noise, always being a sense of "busy" in the air. Living alone is the total opposite. I thought I knew how to be alone and it turns out, I'd never really been alone in my life and now, I can truly say I have learnt how to function by myself, how to be self-sufficient and how to depend on me, myself and I the Queen of my own castle. 

Would you ever live alone or if you do, what has it taught you?

Amy x