Why are you alone?
when being on your own is enough and also when it isn't
It’s near midnight and I’m dancing bachata under a thatch roof beachfront bar that’s basically now a two-floor sauna playing loud music and serving alcohol.
The lighting is dim and romantic, the space is crowded at capacity, everyone on the dance floor is drenched in sweat, and everyone else is lounging around witnessing the steamy scene from the sidelines sipping beers and rum cocktails.
I’m swaying my hips en pareja (partner dancing) with a twenty-something year-old Dominican I met at another dance social two nights prior. I like him because he danced salsa on2 with me the other night, and doesn’t seem to mind how much of a beginner I am at traditional bachata.
Estás aqui sola? He asks me. You’re alone here?
Si I answer. Viajaré sola durante un año I explain. I’m traveling alone for a year
Por qué sola? Why alone?
Por qué no? Why not?
He looks me in the eye more insistently now—as though my answer wasn’t sufficient enough—and asks No, pero porque estas sola eres una chica linda?! No, but why are you alone you’re a pretty girl?!
I try not to roll my eyes and instead reach for my phone (still mid-dance) and type “I’m alone because I haven’t yet met someone I want to be with more than I want to roam free” into Google Translate.
He reads the translation and nods. Tienes Instagram? Are you on Instagram?
Creo que podemos hablar mejor allí—I think we can talk better there—he tells me.
Okay chico. I can no longer refrain from rolling my eyes.
The song ends and I share my Instagram handle with him before thanking him for the dance and swiftly moving on.
Why are you alone?
Probably the most frequently asked question I receive not only from strangers while traveling, but always only from men.
I remember the first time I was asked this question. I was fifteen years old, in the car with the father of a girl I used to babysit for. He was probably driving me home.
Why don’t you have a boyfriend? He asked me. You’re an attractive girl, surely many boys like you…
I’m not really sure how to answer that question I told him. Forget the fact that I felt morbidly uncomfortable trying to give him an answer specifically…I really had no idea what the answer to his question was.
Why didn’t I have a boyfriend? Was I off-putting in some way I didn’t realize? Was I a lesbian and totally unaware of it? Or was there something fundamentally wrong with me?
This question continued to haunt me well up until…frankly a year or two ago.
Rest assured I’ve had several boyfriends since first being made aware of my questionable singledom on that fateful day in the car with Samantha’s dad. I’ve even been in love numerous times. But it’s never lasted. My singledom has somehow managed to outlast any romantic relationship I’ve been in.
Up until last year, a big part of me believed there really was something wrong with me for being so chronically and inexplicably single.
The math just wasn’t math-ing. I’ve been blessed with good looks, intelligence, and even a good sense of humor. Not to mention I’ve done so much inner work at this point! I’m light years ahead of most people I meet in the dating pool…uh oh, could that be my problem?
Okay, I’m obviously kidding.
I don’t actually believe I’m light years ahead of everyone in the dating pool.
In fact, I spent most of my young adult years believing the opposite. That I must be behind everyone else somehow—because everyone else seems to have much less trouble finding someone to date.
Now before this becomes a full-fledged bildungsroman about how I overcame my insecurities and healed my attachment wounds and re-wired my limiting beliefs in romantic love to arise victorious and blah blah blah…
Let me first say this:
There is nothing fucking wrong with being alone.
Actually, I love it.
I have always loved being alone and never even questioned how much I enjoyed my space and solitude until prying men felt the need to undermine it because it didn’t fit their narrative of who an attractive woman is.
I don’t say this to blame them of course. It’s just sad how many years I spent (the prime of my youth!) wrangling with an insidious narrative that insisted there was something wrong with me for not being tied to a man when there never actually was. And how much this narrative only pushed away the love and partnership I truly desired by having me conflate it with something else entirely: a badge of belonging.
True love never tries to belong because it knows it already does.
To poke fun at this sob story for a moment—as we all must inevitably do so as not to seal our fate with despair—do you know what it took for me to burst this bubble of delusion?
I had to realize that I’ve been chronically single because a part of me wanted it that way.
A part of me wanted to understand the experience of being a woman untethered and free for reasons I can speculate about all day but will never likely be sure of.
Was it to access a way of being women in my lineage never could? Was it part of my soul’s mysterious agenda in this lifetime? Was it healing a wound from a past life in which I was married off as a pubescent bride? Or is it simply God’s plan that at times has seemed cruel and punishing, but is perhaps well-intended and mired in a goodness meant to eclipse my wildest good dreams?
Who fucking knows? All I’m sure of is I’m done trying to figure it out.
Especially after understanding how silly it is to idealize people in relationships because—as it turns out—they’re not necessarily happier or better off than I (or any single person) is alone.
It took me a stupendous while to realize that the people I knew in relationships—whose very existence seemed to prove to the wounded part of me that I was broken, lacking, or just plain unlucky in something as primal and universal as human bonding—were not necessarily having a better time being alive than I was.
In fact many of them were constantly bogged down by relationship dramas, or were avoiding making big moves in their lives because they were afraid of losing the comfort their significant other provided lest they risk growing in a new direction.
And for the fiercely free-spirited woman inside me, that’s no way to live.
To be clear though, I do deeply desire a partner. And I also do know couples who are thoroughly human-ly happy together.
But after all these years of searching and getting my heart broken (and breaking other hearts along the way too), I feel a lot clearer about what I want and what I’m absolutely unwilling to settle for.
Now that I’m not desperately looking to secure belonging to the human herd (because we all belong silly! whether we try to or not) I find myself uninterested in any old suitable match. I don’t care to just make it work with someone. I want a fairytale love story with nothing short of a proper soulmate goddamnit!
But don’t you think you’re setting the bar a little unrealistically high? Don’t you worry that by doing that you’ll just let your (dwindling!) life pass you by? Do you even believe in the flimsy woo-woo concept of soulmates?
I’ve pondered these questions for a while now. And the answer I have to each is fuck no, maybe so but I don’t care to think like that anymore, and fuck yes respectively.
The bar is only too high when your real bar is set too low.
Life can only pass you by if you see yourself as having a passive role in it. Take a more active role and life will pass through and with you.
And yes, I absolutely believe in soulmates! I’ve met several of them already—some in the form of lovers (although I probably want to believe this more than it’s actually true), a few close friends, mentors, a man forty years older than me, and even animals. And I know there are many more out there I haven’t met yet.
When it comes to soulmates—particularly those of the true love variety—it appears they don’t arrive quicker the harder you look for them. They simply arrive in right timing—particularly when you’re not trying to figure out what “right timing” means.
I trust that whoever is my soulmate, whoever I’m meant to have and raise children with (if I’m meant to do that), whoever I’m meant to adventure and grow old with—will arrive in perfect timing and in a way I could never have anticipated.
I trust that whoever it is will make me laugh and frustrate me in equal measure.
I trust that they will impress me and not let me get away with being such a smartass so much of the time—while also consistently reminding me I’m the smartest and funniest person they’ve ever met.
I trust that we will both inspire each other to be the greatest version of ourselves we could possibly (and reasonably) be.
And I trust that as deeply as we might get to know one another, we’ll never claim to have the other fully figured out.
Until then, I will proceed to roam free and relish my time alone.
But do I ever find myself wishing this person would just show up already?! Of course.
These last few weeks of traveling alone have kicked up various levels of drudgery I feel about being exposed to the constant gazing and gawking of strange men.
Sure, wandering the world as a woman alone is exhilarating at times, but it’s also exhausting.
To fend for yourself constantly, to always be on guard walking down the street, to refuse what may very well be the kindness of strangers because you don’t want to risk your globe-trotting adventure becoming a horror story for your parents’ friends to eventually read about on Facebook.
I believe most people are kind and well-intentioned and I generally give them the benefit of the doubt, but sadly this perspective doesn’t always lend itself to street-smarts.
Because I’m a woman alone and far from my familiar stomping grounds, better safe than sorry is my current mantra.
So yes, I absolutely find myself wishing I wasn’t alone sometimes. Wishing I had a strong man beside me to ward off the predatory stares and advances of other men, so I could relax and enjoy myself out in public without being so vigilant.
Hell, I even find myself wishing I wasn’t so damn free-spirited to insist on having this kind of journey. I have moments where inside I am throwing a full-blown temper tantrum regretting my decision to do this, wondering why I couldn’t just be an obedient little Stepford wife in the suburbs somewhere who goes on relaxing vacations to places like this with her husband a few times a year (where he pays for everything and makes all the logistical decisions).
Sometimes I wish I was the kind of woman who has never known (and will never know) the perils and triumphs of being—let alone traveling—by herself. And yet, I feel a strong need to be a mother who imparts this kind of wisdom on her children someday so here I am full choosing this. All in.
So yeah, no matter how tired or frightened or victimized I feel about being alone sometimes, I also fully understand that looking for company or companionship from fear or lack or desperation will never invite the caliber of connection I truly want.
And I can relax about this because I’m no longer equating the speed with which I manifest my earthly desires with how much of an enlightened spiritual gangster I am for mastering the natural laws of the universe…
As much as I wish my true love would just get here already, I won’t be looking for them in the sense of seeking another person to help me feel a type of way I can’t bring myself to feel on my own.
How could I be looking for romance now? I’m dancing my way around the world for god’s sake! What could be more fucking romantic than that?!
So now whenever a man asks me why are you alone?
No matter where in the world I find myself or in what language I have to Google Translate my answer, I will find a way to tell him:
I’m alone because I genuinely love my own company.
I’m alone because we’re all alone at the end of the day—and I’m tired of trying to escape it.
I’m alone because apparently I’m too stubborn and fiercely independent to tie myself to a man just because society tells me I should.
I’m alone because I want to know who I am and what I’m capable of when I don’t have anyone to answer to.
I’m alone because I want nothing less than the greatest love story I could write—and I’ll gladly be alone until the person I’m meant to write it with makes themselves known to me.
I’m alone because I need to know what the world looks like through my own eyes—because I’m afraid I’ve spent lifetimes looking through someone else’s.
Travel update:
I finished up my time in Las Terrenas a few days ago and am now in the north of the island (in Puerto Plata) until the end of the month.
While it’s true I planned this move less than a week after arriving in Las Terrenas, I found myself quite ready to leave LT when the time came.
I did want more time with my dance instructors there, but I also wanted time to work on my business which appeared easier to do from this Airbnb here in Puerto Plata—steps from the ocean and the historic city center with the most beautiful rooftop view of the mountains—and blocks from where the international bachata festival will be happening at the end of the month.
Las Terrenas is cool but it was also way too small and full of expats—which meant there was a vague sense of communal cohesion because so many people were from so many disparate parts of the world. Melting pots are nice when they’re big—I’m a born New Yorker. But when they’re small they get weird fast.
Las Terrenas seemed to be one of those liminal places—or phases—you entered and left when you were ready to commit fully to something. It didn’t have strong get shit done energy, but a strong welcome to the vortex where you’ll be sure of nothing but how much you don’t want to leave. Typical beach town vibes I guess. It’s nice if you’re looking to retreat somewhere no one questions you. But when you’re finally ready to stop avoiding all questions, you may find yourself wishing to go elsewhere.
Now I’m in Puerto Plata and while it feels like I’m seeing this place for the first time, my parents informed me on the phone yesterday morning that we’ve been here twice before as a family.
I do remember the snorkeling and the dolphin petting, but not much more than that. Not because it was a bad time, but because I wasn’t seeing it fully through my own eyes.
Anyways, I’m in Puerto Plata for the next three weeks in a beautiful rooftop apartment, and while I plan to look for bachata dancing here I’m not sure how much I’ll find before the festival starts.
It could also be a good time to explore other styles of dancing—specifically the kinds that happen in the clubs and the streets.
The streets here see a fusion of rhythms—a melting pot of modern and traditional Dominican (and international) music that blares from colmados (small convenience stores on virtually every block) until 1 or 2am most nights.
I’ve been waking up late most mornings because the Dominican pulse around me rarely stops beating early.
I still don’t understand the half of what they’re saying but the energy of people here is mostly warm and peaceful.
After immersing myself in a wide range of Latin music genres over the last year, I’m proud to say I’m far more fluent in their music than I am in their Spanish. I recognize almost every song I hear in a grocery store, colmado, or blasting from someone’s car speakers.
Turns out my decision to build a life around dance is also a choice to build a life around music. And music—possibly more than science, math, or religion—is full of creative decisions to bridge differences which is to say, I think music has a lot to teach us about peace.
So far I have 2 video projects cooked up to showcase my interpretation and experience of the dancing and music here—godwilling I get my shit together to carry out and film them.
Another reason I feel victimized for doing this alone. How much I wish I had a whole production team helping me bring my ideas to life! One day.
I was reminded in an email yesterday that the reason most people don’t realize their dreams is because 99% of them quit as soon as the efforting phase begins. As soon as life requires you to step up and prove how badly you want something because it’s not just going to be handed to you…
I’m seeing all the ways I’ve subconsciously been expecting my dream to be ready and waiting for me to claim it upon arrival. And so now the real work begins…
I’ll have more details to share about what’s unfolding in Puerto Plata next week :)
If you follow me on Instagram (my handle there is @ilana.khin), you’ll find more visual updates along with short and candid musings in my stories—which I’m having fun with again after many months of not posting.
Much love and talk soon.