I locked myself down and learned to love being alone.
Under the direction of a Dominican priest, I became a secular contemplative Catholic, or, in layman’s terms, a hermit.
This particular type of hermit takes a vow of silence, limiting vocal utterances to the intonation of Latin chants beginning at three-o-clock in the morning and ending after dark. If you’re lucky, you might live in a desert cave somewhere and try to get miracles to happen, or to levitate.
Not being a lucky hermit, I lived in a bi-level apartment in Center City, Philadelphia, so I rarely left the house expecting the miraculous. Even in the face of near starvation, I remained indoors: fasting is encouraged for the average hermit, and I was hardcore—a tough, urban hermit. I guess I could consider it a miracle that I didn’t starve to death.
I was doing this to prepare to become a Carmelite nun; to live in a cloister in solitude in my long brown habit … probably mucking donkey stalls from a lean-to in the freezing sleet, wearing sandals made of baling twine and rawhide. I was just dipping a toe into the waters of suffering first, before I dove straight in.
Friends and family thought I had gone completely insane and, to be honest, between the starvation and exhaustion, and the incessant chanting, I came pretty close.
Two years of my life passed like this before I decided to take a hard turn off the lonely convent superhighway and get myself back on the regular old secular road to civilization. That was March of 2020. My timing was impeccable.
Because my hermitude was pre-pandemic, I was already a quarantine professional by the time lockdowns started just two weeks after I swapped the rosary beads for breaking news. I took three more lonely trips around the sun before my extended contemplation ended after five years. I officially rejoined society at large and moved to Richmond to take a job at this very magazine this very past June.
My stint in solitude saw me travel alone through my birthdays, summer holidays, and Thanksgivings, Christmases, and New Years’ eves. And there were Valentine’s Days, too. Social gatherings and milestone celebrations that others would spend with friends and family, I attended in spirit rather than in person.
When you are alone during the holidays, or even the celebratory days, the tendency is to treat the day in question like any other day of the year. No need to do anything special because, well, why bother? People are painted as the meaning behind any given holiday—and they do, to be sure, add purpose to the party.
But I celebrated more my self-imposed solitary confinement than I ever did during my life in the exterior world. I dressed up, made dinner for one, and drinks for two (or three). Alone, I prepared like I was going out on a date with Mr. Perfect—someone who, not only I could tolerate, but actually like. I ironed dresses, puffed on powder, and spritzed perfume, creating the best version of myself that was only seen by me. Then I partied like nobody’s business and had, in some cases, more fun with just myself than I had with some of the people I considered close companions.
I guess I didn’t stop trying to please myself because no one else was around. As a result, I learned what I liked about all those lonely holidays: that I wasn’t so bad, and I didn’t always need the presence of others in order for me to be happy.
Spending Valentine’s Day alone—a day made for two—eventually helped me come to realize that changing variables—a different city, another person, a new job—wouldn’t change who I was because I alone defined myself.
It was also all those years spent in silent solitude that helped shift my thinking. It allowed me to get to know myself like another person—something I would not have been able to do otherwise, and I wouldn’t go back and do things differently, no matter how crazy it seems.
It made moving and uprooting my life a joy, and it made me glad to rejoin society, no longer relegating myself to a life of contemplative seclusion. It made me appreciate my life, and it gave my wonderful new friends, and many other people, the ability to know me better. I could finally see myself for who I was. And, at last, I liked what I saw.
