Cat M.

Photography by Joseph Bui

If you’re reading this, go to the movies alone.

I start with breathing deeply. 5 things I can see. 4 things I can touch. 3 things I can hear. 2 things I can smell. 1 thing I appreciate. Repeat.

When I was ten, my mom took me to the town art store and let me pick out a few things. Afterwards, we got dinner at my favorite burger and cupcake restaurant. It was ten-year-old Me’s definition of a perfect day. We ordered our burgers and sat down in a booth. I set my Oreo cupcake aside on a napkin for later. The restaurant was quiet. Aside from the faint murmur of the news from the TV on the wall, it was just me, Mom, and one other man in the dining area. For some reason, I felt so safe there, like nothing could penetrate the simplicity of this moment.

As we ate, my eyes kept wandering to the man. White. Mid 50s, maybe. A little bit dirty, but still put together, probably just came from work. He was sitting at the counter enjoying his own dinner. The burger looked tiny in his giant hands…his hands. That’s when I noticed his hands. Yes, they were dirty and probably bigger than my face, but what I saw immediately was the emptiness. I quickly glanced at Mom’s hand. Hers was not empty. She had a bright silver ring on her left hand. I looked back at the man. Could it be that this man was eating alone because he was entirely alone? His hands were empty, and I wondered if it meant his heart was too.

I asked Mom if she thought that man at the counter was sad. I hated when people were sad. She was not sure what I was getting at, so I explained it to her. She looked at me with loving eyes, ready to break the news to me about real life. To anyone else, this moment would probably be small, but to me, this moment was so very big.

When I got to college, I did not stop moving long enough to realize that being alone scared me. At the start of the spring semester of freshman year, I realized I did not have a close group of friends, the work was piling up, I felt like an intruder in my own room, and the thought of picking my major caused me to spiral into a state of existential dread (dramatic? maybe), but all I wanted was a hug from my mom. I laid in my bed on a Saturday night crying heavily for the first time since I had gotten to college. My chest started to close up, and it became difficult to breathe. I was scared, and that only made things worse. Finally, I fell asleep. This was my first panic attack.

My panic attacks came suddenly and semi-frequently. Every few weeks, they were usually sparked by some stressor, homework, or homesickness, maybe, and I thought that that's all it was. But after over a year, I looked back on each of these moments and deduced that the underlying cause for my panic attacks was loneliness. I am just one small person in this giant world. Are we not just existing next to one another? How can anyone ever be anything more than alone?

This past summer was full of adventures and new friends, but it was also full of personal growth. The end of the spring semester left me feeling like I was not strong enough to carry my world in the same way I had been for so long. I was coming off my worst panic attack of all time, where I sat crumpled in a ball on the quad steps, unable to move or walk or breathe in the darkness of finals. It had been almost six months since my previous panic attack, and I thought I was holding it together, but everything I felt, everything I ignored, everything I pushed down in those six months came out that night after I ended a relationship with someone that I was convinced was the only thing keeping me afloat. The loneliness became too heavy to hold inside. I thought I couldn’t make it stop without them. But I could. I thought it would never end. But it did.

After taking a few weeks to reflect on what was best for me, I went into summer with two goals: 1) learn how to ride a longboard and 2) become more comfortable with being physically and emotionally alone.

I lived in a house with four roommates, and there were always people around, yet I somehow found that I was often by myself. I spent a lot of time practicing riding my longboard, going swimming, and playing music. Near the end of the summer, everyone moved out, and I was truly left alone for two weeks. I felt like I was in a montage in a movie about a girl who was finally starting to see the beauty in being alone. I made brownies and painted. I wrote a song for the first time in a while. I went to the ice cream shop, to work, to the bookstore, to the lake, to a farm, and I went to the movies.

I don’t even like Marvel movies all that much, but I saw Black Widow on a rainy Friday night just because I felt like it. Who wouldn’t want to see a smart, independent woman confront her past and kick some ass in their own time of personal growth? Not only did I go alone, but the entire theatre was empty. I wondered if the boy who handed me my ticket noticed it was just me. I wondered if he felt bad for me or if he thought I was sad. Do other people think about that stuff? I don’t know. It could have been sad if I let it be. I do that sometimes. I trick myself into thinking I am sad just because I am alone. But it wasn’t, and I didn’t.

It has been a while since I thought about the man in the burger shop. But my time at the movies made me realize that the boy with the ticket was me eating dinner with my mom, and I was the man at the counter. I assumed that the man was sad, that he was lonely, but my perception of his loneliness was a projection of my own fears. Being alone doesn’t have to be lonely. I still forget this.

A few weeks ago, while I was hiking, my friends went up ahead, and I stayed back to take a break. While they were gone, just for those few minutes, I could feel myself getting sucked into another panic attack—just me on the edge of a black hole of nothingness. Breathe deeply. It’s like I’m looking down into the pit formed from my deepest fears of loneliness surfaced by my momentary alone-ness. Tree. Ant. Clover. Footprint. Cloud. My panic attacks have become physical manifestations of abstract feelings. Grass. Rock. Dirt. Heartbeat. The attacks themselves are mental. Wind. Bird. Leaves. I can let my mind and spirit fall, or I can ground myself in the physical reality while the black hole begins to fill. Perfume. Sweat. I was with myself, and that is all I’ll ever really be. The sun. And that is beautiful.

Cat M., Colby College

Connect With Us

To follow IfYoureReadingThis at Colby on Instagram, get in touch with our chapter, and learn about more resources available to Colby College students, visit our chapter’s homepage.

AUTHOR CONTACT

This author has opted to allow readers who resonate with their story to contact them. If you would like to speak to the author of this letter about their experience, please use the form below.