I’ve never understood why people are afraid to dine alone. When people think of a person dining alone, they usually think about someone getting stood up for a date or this poor, sweet, old mourning man at the in-n-out. This is why I’ve gotten a lot of weird looks going solo into restaurants, I’ve had people pack my order to go without even asking because they just assume a teen girl would never eat alone in a restaurant.

During my high school years, I was often alone. I did have friends, who were wonderful, but many of them often had work and I had (and still have) a chronic illness. This illness (which I’ve talked about before in these articles > 1 2 3) causes my health to drastically vary from day to day. I’d often flake out on my friends when we’d make plans to get lunch or go shopping or just hang out. So I learned quite quickly that if I’m feeling good enough to do something I enjoy, I need to “piss or get off the pot” because I may feel like garbage again within 12 hours. But of course other people have lives too, and I couldn’t just summon my friends to hang out at a moment's notice. So I often had to make the decision, stay home and sit around, or go out and do something I love but… (dun dun dun) alone! I very quickly learned to be my own best friend.

Once you’ve decided to go out alone, the first thing you need to get over is people’s perceptions. People are gonna give you weird looks. Especially if you’re a random 16-year-old asking for a table for one at a Vietnamese restaurant in the middle of a town you barely know. But I’ve found the adults to be more judgemental than the teenagers. They may think you’re stealing because “WHY ELSE would a teenager go to the mall totally alone?” I’ve been followed around stores quite a few times by employees trying to catch sticky fingered adolescents. After you stop caring what judgey adults think, it’s basically just getting over your own perceptions. No, it's not embarrassing or sad to just enjoy your own company and its a hell of a lot better sitting at home in your sweats covered in Cheeto dust feeling sorry for yourself. And you don’t have to be chronically ill in order to enjoy your own company. Its a great skill set to be able to enjoy yourself; just yourself. Because no matter who you are, at some point in your life you will find yourself in a strange city due to a job transfer, a wedding, or something else, and you will need to make a choice, be brave and explore and enjoy yourself or cower in your studio apartment/ hotel room in total fear of being alone.

Now, I’m not saying being alone is better than being with other people by any means. I love my friends, I love going out in groups and socializing, but sometimes it's necessary, and can be a nice change of pace.