It's date night for your parents, or maybe your roommate has gone away for the weekend, or you finally have the free time to enjoy your one bedroom apartment. Regardless, YOU'RE FREE.

Alone time is a blessed, rare thing these days. Our day to day lives demand every single ounce of our energy and attention. Having the house to yourself with no obligations equals a night of endless possibilities.

It's exciting and empowering! Or at least...it starts out that way.

As the lonely night progresses, what once felt like a gift from God above slowly becomes a subtle kind of hell that drags on until the morning comes.

Stage 1. Endless Possibilities

Maybe there is some DIY project you've been wanting to try. Maybe you're hoping to catch up on your Netflix binge. Maybe you'll use your night of freedom to eat your favorite junk foods without receiving any judgment from anyone else. Maybe you'll finally settle down with that book you've been wanting to finish! Maybe you can finally get some laundry done. Maybe you'll go through your closet and try on all of your fancy clothes for fun.

The excitement at the very beginning of the night is SUCH a lovely feeling! You could really do ANYTHING!

Stage 2. I'm Going To Eat All The Things!!

Having the house to yourself for that night means you have to provide for yourself...which means nourishment. WHICH MEANS eating whatever you want for dinner and AS MUCH as you want!

For me, it's usually a great big bowl of "Frosted Flakes" followed by various "guilty pleasure" snacks (ie. mom's secret stash of chocolates, the last orange Fanta soda, and anything else I can find in the pantry that I can devour out of boredom).

If it's popcorn or chips or candy, you're perfectly free to enjoy as much of it as you can before you start to thoroughly regret your decisions!!

Stage 3. “Maybe, Maybe Not”

Maybe you'll plan out all those wonderful "alone time" activities, but you'll actually just end up falling asleep on the couch to a tv movie you've seen 20-something times already while that soda you were so excited about goes flat on the end table.

It happens. You sit down to do the planning for your free evening, pull out your phone just to check a few things. Like a few posts, double-tap some instas, snap some chats, tweet some tweets, contribute to online debates about social and political issues that SHOULD BE COMMON SENSE.... ya know, the standard 5-minute-turned-2-hour-phone-check-in.

Suddenly, you've been sitting on the couch, comfortable for quite some time...and it feels so nice. That TV movie was on last night but you didn't get to watch it all the way through. Who knows when Disney Channel will have such a lovely throwback??

Soon enough, sitting on your bum on the comfy couch and really indulging your natural tendency toward laziness for once, just seems like the right thing to do.

Stage 4. The Night Is Almost Over??

It's starting to get late... those "endless" possibilities are quickly dwindling. Those plans you had, those DREAMS you had are slipping through your clammy fingers just like the TV remote is as you drift off again.

The self-loathing starts to bubble up inside you as you wonder:

How did it come to this? Why did I waste so much time? Is it even worth it to get up and try to do something productive at this point? I've been falling asleep on and off all evening--how am I still TIRED??

You're night of freedom is coming to a close, and what did you do with it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And boy was it nice to do absolutely nothing for a while...but now you're full of regret as you have to kiss goodbye those potential projects and to do list items that haven't gotten any closer to being crossed off.

Stage 5. The Bump In The Night

Suddenly, you're wide awake. It's much later than it was when you last closed your eyes. The house is significantly more ominous at this time of night/wee hours of the morning.

Some infomercial flickers on the TV screen where you had once been watching a marathon of "F.R.I.E.N.D.S."

It's so completely dark outside that you can imagine faces peering in at you from the abyss. Every single noise feels ten times louder than it really is. Suddenly every horror movie trailer you accidentally caught glimpses of is coming back to you. Every scary story you've ever heard, every chilling murder mystery or exaggerated news story you've ever seen flashes into your mind. Your ability to rationalize and calm your panicked thoughts is suddenly drowned out by a much stronger voice...the voice that is screaming....mindlessly screaming in young Macaulay Culkin's adorable little kid voice. Except it's not endearing...it's not part of good old family friendly movie... it's your inner child...warning you to follow every superstition you've ever heard of.

So what do you do? You go around and turn on every light in the house, triple check that every door and window is locked tight, and run to bed so you can hide in the sacred sanctuary of your blankets and 2-10 (okay maybe 15) stuffed animals.

And come morning? You're embarrassed about last night's lazy-turned-irrationally-terrified excursions.

And though you think you've learned your lesson, the next time you get a free night when you "home alone," you'll do the same thing all over again.