I wrote unabashedly of how much I am enjoying spending time with myself on my birthday post.
> over the last year I have repeatedly chosen spending time with myself over (excellent!) company

One day later, Winnie Lim published her own piece about enjoying solitude

> One of the best things I’ve done for myself is to learn to be alone.
> When I was younger I believed I couldn’t be alone… I think I had this idea that my life would be complete if I found the right person. If only I could belong somewhere, to someone.
> In one relationship I stayed way longer than I should because I thought … Love meant endurance and sacrifices.

This is a much better version of my own post. I would quote so much more from it. The quote that terrified me the most was “if you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company” - i worked very hard to be more fun to be with, to predict what people wanted and what will work. But I was still lonely because I couldn’t accept myself.

In some ways, I am grateful for the skills that not being able to be alone gave me. I became very good at listening to people, and coordinating groups, and communicating how my brain works. But now I am also glad to have the option to not be forced into any of that.

Tonight, this poem found its way to me:

`The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.`

- Derek Walcott, Love after Love

Thank you, serendipity, for curating this lovely celebration on the self.