How I Made Loneliness Feel Like a Lifestyle Choice

What it means to live inside pauses, and why I still think solitude is sexier when no one notices it’s deliberate.

Everything smelled like rain, and I thought that was enough. It reminded me of the garden after someone had hosed it down. I didn't grow up around cities, but they always seemed to tolerate me. I think I liked being somewhere that didn't know my name, but still assumed I belonged.

Striped sweaters, pleated skirts, tangled headphones, clothes that made me feel like I was always en route to class. Or auditioning for a French indie film. Moving through a city of lights that buzzed louder than conversations, a dull, constant hum that never really stopped, even when the streets emptied or the shops pulled down their metal shutters. I moved through it the way you walk through static: alert, but blurred around the edges. Roaming through busy stations, empty cafés, quiet library aisles, the kind of spaces that were public but impersonal, where everyone passed through but no one stayed long enough to be noticed.

I knew the schedule of trains I wasn't taking, the smell of pastries I never bought, the sound of my own shoes across polished floors. I always wondered what it would feel like to walk in and choose something without thinking, to point at a donut, maybe, and eat it right there. Like a normal person. Like someone with blood sugar, zero shame, and no existential beef with breakfast. But I'm very strict with myself. I'd linger just long enough to let the air hit, warm sugar, butter, vanilla rising from trays behind glass—and then I'd keep walking like it hadn't crossed my mind.

I wasn't running out of anything. That's what made the slowness feel indulgent, not dangerous. Being there didn't serve a purpose, and maybe that's why it felt like a secret, like I was getting away with something small and private, a softness no one had to witness.  I came from a world that didn't use public transport. That's probably why I liked it, the quiet subversion of being somewhere unchauffeured. Sitting alone felt earned. Watching the city move without me in it felt like a choice.

I liked places where no one stayed long, where nothing stuck. Where it was normal to be alone, to be quiet, to be looking down at nothing in particular, most of it passed without detail. Just motion. Noise, breath, movement. The lift of a coat sleeve. The scratch of a chair leg on tile.

I wasn't trying to stand out. But I didn't want to vanish into the wallpaper either. I wanted to be the kind of girl you looked at twice, but never remembered why. I wanted to be looked at without having to speak. The kind of presence that makes people wonder but not ask. I think I learned that posture in school, that specific neutrality. Just polished enough to blend in with the ones who mattered, just distant enough to never be mistaken for someone waiting to belong. I walked like I knew where I was going, even when I didn't. That was usually enough. It worked 90% of the time. The other 10%, I accidentally stumbled into a linguistics conference breakroom or a storage unit filled with mannequins missing their hands, with no recollection of how I had ended up there.

No one talks about how loud fluorescent lights are until you've been under them too long. And I was under them a lot. Not because I had anywhere to be, but more because they were always on in the places I ended up. They flickered sometimes, but mostly they just buzzed, high, steady, and inescapable. You don't notice it at first. But then it's all you can hear, like the sound is inside your head, not around it. It doesn't hurt, exactly. It just presses. Constant and low, a hum under everything else. After a while, I stopped noticing until I left the building and felt the sudden quiet of normal air. Even the street seemed softer in comparison.

I think I liked that. The sudden relief. The way silence felt like something you could wear.

I miss subway lights in my eyes, the way they flickered across the windows, breaking my reflection into something softer. Less defined. Easier to look at. Not quite me, but close enough to follow with my eyes as the train moved. There was something comforting in the blur, in the way the glass doubled everything, made it all a little less certain. I could sit across from myself without having to explain anything. No smile. No correction. Just the outline of a girl who looked like she read too much and might start crying if you asked about her favourite movie.

Sometimes I'd stare until my own face went unfamiliar, my mouth wrong, my eyes too far apart, and my hair a bit too dark. It never felt dramatic. Just distant. Like someone I'd borrowed things from.

Loneliness wasn't dramatic then. It didn't lurch or shout or demand anything from me. It just sat next to me like noise, like background static, easy to ignore until everything else went quiet. It lived in the pauses. In the space between songs. In the wait before the train doors closed. I wouldn't have called it sadness. I still don't think I would. It was just a feeling I couldn't shake, one that stayed close but never really touched me. Like a bruise I'd forgotten about until something pressed against it.

That's the part that's stayed with me. Probably always will.

I moved without urgency. There was rarely a reason to be anywhere, and even when there was, I didn't feel like rushing to meet it. Sometimes I rode past my stop on purpose just to see how long I could go before anyone noticed I wasn't where I said I'd be. Sometimes I just forgot to get off. Not in a distracted way, just in that quiet, slow kind of forgetting that happens when the lights blur and the announcements start to sound the same. I always stood in the same place, by the door, leaning against the divider on the side facing forward. I liked the way the movement pressed me into it, like the city was gently holding me in place, even if just by force.

The train kept going, so I did too.

There wasn't much to say about it. Long walks that led nowhere in particular, though they usually ended at water. The kind that gathers without spectacle, canals, harbours, the quiet undersides of bridges. Places where things collect. Leaves. Bottles. Thoughts. I'd stand there for a while, coffee in hand, like I was waiting for something to surface, though I never really expected it to. I always kind of hoped I'd see a seal. Something about their vibe, fat, quiet, mysterious, felt aspirational. I imagined us nodding at each other like two girls who just get it. The coffee would go cold before I finished it, not because I forgot, but just because I didn't like it that much. But it gave me something to hold. And sometimes that was enough. It made me look busy. Like I had somewhere to be, or someone waiting. People don't ask questions when you're holding coffee. It's basically an invisibility cloak for awkward people.

Now I don't even know if I ever liked it, or if I just got used to the taste the way you get used to minor inconveniences, like blisters, or boys who say they hate small talk and then spend forty-five minutes telling you about their crypto portfolio.

Afternoons slid into evenings. Evenings into nights. The kind of hours that don't announce themselves, they just collect. Soft and weightless, but heavy if you stack too many. I stopped keeping track after a while. Someone once asked if I was lost. I wasn't. But I said yes anyway. Just to try on the softness of being helped. Some days blurred at the edges, others vanished completely. I'd look up, and it would already be dark, and I'd have nothing to show for it except a half-drunk coffee and some vague memory of walking somewhere. Sometimes I bought things, like books, mugs, bracelets, or old things. Small enough to fit in a coat pocket. I never needed them, but I always found a way to use them. At one point, I was probably one paperweight away from becoming a hoarder.

I didn't feel bad, exactly. Just delayed, like I was waiting for something to begin, only the beginning kept moving further out of reach. People always talk about time as if it's passing them by. Mine never passed. It hovered. So soft and idle, just out of reach. It felt like holding your breath without realising it until the exhale came in the form of darkness outside the window, the kind that arrives before you're ready, even if you knew it was coming. That's what threaded through. The weightless ache of not moving. Of being still for so long, the air starts to fold around you.

I miss how easy it was to let days slip by without asking for more. To let them spool out behind me like a thread. Nothing dramatic, nothing wasted, just hours layered on hours. Some light enough to forget, some heavy enough to keep. But none of them urgent. I could move through them like scenery, like I was there to notice and not to shape.

And I miss the way that almost felt like enough. Not good. Not exciting. But bearable in a way that made me believe there was something elegant about it. And sometimes, when it's late and everything smells like rain, it still does. The trains, the coffee, the blur in the window, they never really stopped. I still take the long way home. Not out of forgetfulness anymore. My mind knows where to get off. But there's something about delaying arrival that still makes sense to me.

The city feels smaller now. Familiar. I've stopped needing to read the signs. I know where the doors open. I know which step on the stairs creaks. And the buzzing, I don't notice it as much. It's in the walls, it's in the air, it's in the glow of shopfronts at night. It's less intrusive now. Almost gentle. Like background radiation. It's just part of how the world hums.

I think that's the part no one ever talks about—how some patterns don't mean anything until you realise you never left them, how stillness starts to look like stability if you don't call it by its name. It's not that I want to go back. It's just that I never really moved forward. I've stayed exactly where I was. Just quieter now. More fluent in waiting.

In Latin, the imperfect tense describes an action that was ongoing but never finished. I liked that. It felt honest, like naming something without needing to change it.