if nobody wants to go with me, i'll go alone

if nobody wants to go with me, i'll go alone

learning how to do things alone: directly from my journal

gor

Oct 27, 2026

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there is a certain sadness in wanting to go somewhere and having nobody to go with. a film you have been waiting to watch, a restaurant you have saved on your phone, a city you want to see before the year ends. you mention it to a few people, try to find a date that works, wait for somebody to be as excited about it as you are. days turn into weeks. the film leaves the theatre. the restaurant remains saved on your phone. and the thing you wanted to do becomes another thing you will do someday, when somebody is available to come with you.

we lose so much of our lives waiting for company. there are places we have never visited, things we have never tried, experiences we have postponed for years because the people around us were busy living their own lives. and we understand. everyone has work, responsibilities, their own exhaustion to contend with. nobody owes us their time every time we want to go somewhere. still, it hurts to realise how often our lives have been held hostage by the simple fact that we wanted somebody beside us.

learning to do things alone begins with accepting that hurt. you might feel a little embarrassed walking into a restaurant and asking for a table for one. you might check your phone more often than necessary, pretending to be occupied while everyone around you seems to have arrived in pairs. you might wonder what the waiter thinks, whether the people at the next table have noticed, whether you look like someone who had plans that fell through. you might even feel a little foolish for having come at all.

and then your food arrives. the coffee is good. the sunlight falls across the table. someone outside is trying to keep a newspaper from blowing away. you take another bite, look around, and realise that you are here. you wanted this experience, and you have given it to yourself. nobody had to agree to the plan. nobody had to be free. you did not have to wait for your life to become convenient for somebody else.

i want us to have more of these moments. the first film watched alone, the first morning spent wandering through a city without a destination, the first time we enter a bookstore and stay until our feet hurt. i want us to know what it feels like to choose a place because we want to see it, order what we want to eat, change our minds halfway through an afternoon, and go home whenever we please. there is a kind of freedom in discovering that our own wishes are enough of a reason to do something.

grocery shopping alone can become an afternoon of its own. you take your time choosing fruit, buy the ingredients for a meal you have never made, return home with a bag heavier than you intended. you cook for yourself. perhaps you put on music, perhaps you eat standing at the kitchen counter because you cannot be bothered to set the table. the evening belongs to you either way. there is no audience to impress and nobody to disappoint. you are simply a person looking after the life they have been given.

i know that doing things alone is not always beautiful. there are moments when the absence of another person becomes painfully obvious. you see something funny and instinctively turn to tell someone, only to find nobody there. you walk past a couple sharing a dessert and remember how lovely it is to share things. you reach the top of a hill and wish there were someone beside you to see the view. independence cannot replace the particular happiness of being known, of having someone remember the story you are telling, of looking at another person and knowing they are experiencing the same moment as you.

we should be allowed to admit that. wanting company is human. wanting someone to witness our lives does not make us incapable of living them. some experiences become more beautiful when they are shared, and there will always be things we wish we could have done with somebody we love. the point is to stop letting the absence of that person decide what we get to experience.

the world is full of things that will not wait for us. there are mornings when the weather is perfect for a walk, exhibitions that will close next week, little cafés tucked into streets we have passed a hundred times without entering. there are books we want to read in parks, songs we want to hear performed live, mountains we want to climb, languages we want to learn. there are versions of ourselves waiting on the other side of experiences we have not yet had. it would be a terrible thing to keep postponing their arrival because we are afraid of being seen alone.

and the more you learn to enjoy your own company, the more freely you can choose the company of others. you can love your friends and still go to the exhibition they could not attend. you can miss your partner and still have a wonderful afternoon without them. you can want to be included without treating every invitation as proof that you matter. there is a difference between choosing to share your life with someone and needing their presence to feel that your life has begun.

i hope we become people who are willing to take ourselves seriously enough to make plans for our own happiness. people who do not need to be accompanied to feel entitled to a good meal, a beautiful afternoon, a little adventure. people who can sit alone with a book, look out of a train window, order another coffee, and feel the sweetness of being exactly where they chose to be.

we are here, after all. our lives are already happening. we should get to be part of them.

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