I am bad at being alone. I don’t mind being by myself for a couple hours, watching TV, writing articles such as this one, etc., but being alone for extended periods of time makes me unhappy. Even more than that, I can’t stand to be alone in public. I get incredibly uncomfortable when I am somewhere I don’t know anybody. I hate being the one sitting in a room full of people and feeling like I’m the only one not a part of a conversation.

When I was starting college, this anxiety that I had was suddenly becoming a much more pressing issue. It had the potential to become a much more frequent occurrence. So, when I was starting college last fall, I actively avoided being alone. And for a good majority of my first semester, I succeeded.

I met a guy my first night on campus. It didn’t need to be anything, it could have just been a flirty friendship for the first few weeks of school that eventually would fizzle out. But because of my fear of being alone, it became a lot more. Within about two weeks, I had entered into the most serious relationship of my life.

The first “I love you” was said before we were even “officially” dating and before I could figure out if I really wanted to be in a relationship, we were on our way to getting promise rings. But while we both may have thought we were ridiculously in love, subconsciously I knew that I was merely finding comfort in the ease of our interactions and the gift of not ever having to go anywhere alone. Because if I had him, I never had to go to dinner by myself, I never had to worry about having plans on the weekend and I always had someone to study with.

It soon became apparent to me that I had few other friends, that I wasn’t spending nearly enough time on my school work and that I was feeling emotionally less and less in control of myself. The times that he was busy and I was left alone for any given period of time I felt unloved and helpless. I didn’t know who I was at school without him and it took a long time on my own to figure that out.

So here’s my cautionary tale for any incoming freshman. Codependency is not a difficult bond to form and there is such a thing as moving too quickly in a relationship. I was too afraid at the start of my freshman year to learn how to be alone, to figure out who I was without a safety net. Don’t do what I did. Don’t look for a safety blanket. Don’t run from the thought of being alone. Figure out how to be comfortable with only yourself and do it sooner rather than later. Learning how to be alone teaches you a lot about yourself, something that I could have learned much sooner if I weren’t so afraid.