‘How I learned to love living on my own’
After all her flatmates partnered up, Dolly Alderton was forced to find a place of her own – and now treasures the joy of living solo
i think you can tell I live alone. I realised it recently, as I did my weekly shop on my Sainsbury’s app that includes the most bizarre choices that only a household of one would buy. (After a week I need to replenish my giant tub of Greek yogurt and jar of pickled walnuts.) There’s the Whatsapp group where I chat with my neighbours and do amateur sleuthing on local safety. I talk to myself. I listen to podcasts while I cook. I buy those miniature pots of baked beans for dinner. I am incredibly specific about the following: fresh flowers ( little jars of ranunculi and roses in winter, hyacinths and tulips in spring), my antibacterial surface spray of choice (Dettol), how often sheets should be washed (once a week without fail), radio at the weekend (Graham Norton on a Saturday, Desert Island Discs on a Sunday, followed by Elaine Paige’s musicals show). I am a person who lives alone now. It is a predominant part of my identity.
This wasn’t who I was for a long time. At boarding school I was ‘room-mate’. As a young adult I was ‘housemate’. Living with my best friends for five years was one of my most defining traits – which is why I found it so hard when, one by one, they fell in love and moved out to live with their boyfriends.
I loved the hysteria of living with friends; the prank texts on a Sunday, the drunken dance routines learned in the living room with the sofas pushed against the wall after work on a Tuesday. I loved lying in a six-leg-tangle on the sofa, watching so much reality TV that we all immediately noticed when the Tapper family on Gogglebox bought a new sofa. I loved the group adventures of pub lock-ins and Spanish holidays and nights that never ended – then returning to our domestic (and dirty and damp) sanctuary together.
When I was told the final time that one of them was moving out, I realised I was faced with an opportunity: to start the next chapter of my life, just as they were all starting theirs – but mine wouldn’t involve a man. I managed, after persistent trawling, to find the only one-bed flat in London’s zone 2 that I could just afford, we divided up all our paperbacks and chipped ceramics and I opened the front door to my very first home on my own. That was just over a year and a half ago and I can say, with all my heart, it was the best decision I ever made.
I love the space that solo living affords – not just for your tat, but for your
in ever have to put on as how at home – i can feel all my feelings
emotions. I never have to put on a show for anyone at home. I can feel all my feelings unselfconsciously – cry into my pillow when I’m sad; sing the Mary Poppins soundtrack in the shower when I’m happy. I can exist in total silence when I need it. What a freedom and luxury that is – to have a peaceful, solitary space that’s all my own, in which I can do exactly as I please.
Of course, there are certain challenges, too. I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to a strange noise, grab the bread knife I keep buried under my bed and wish there was a man lying next to me or a friend in the next room to hold my hand as I gingerly wobble into the hallway, holding the makeshift weapon aloft ( it’s always just the boiler). When things break or leak or stop working, I remember how much easier they were to fix when three of us were on the case. And I am still completely at a loss as to how any single girl who lives on her own manages to do up the zip of a dress without help.
And you have to be your own flatmate/ husband – you have to make sure you are looking after you, because no one else will. No one else will close your laptop at 2am and tell you to stop working. Or remind you that you haven’t eaten lunch. No one else will tell you to put your phone down when you’re embroiled in a furious row with a stranger over comments under a Kesha Instagram post. It’s up to you to take care of yourself. It’s an art form; and I love learning it.
I am aware of what a privileged position I’m in. I lucked out on a good deal for rent (and my flat is by no means a dream home) – but I know that occupying even the pokiest space in a city is just not an option for many. The joy solo living has given me makes me utterly infuriated that it isn’t even an option for some women– that they may find themselves in unsuitable relationships or unhappy flatshares, just because it provides a roof over their head.
I also hope there will be a time when I fall in love and no longer live on my own. But while I worry that the sense of calm I’ve found in solo living will be very, very difficult to give up, I’m also reminded that the right relationship should offer up that very same harmony, too.
I may not live alone forever, but I will always be grateful for the time I worked out how to find a home in myself, without the help of anyone else. Dolly’s ‘ Everything I Know About Love’ (£8.99, Penguin) is now out in paperback with a new chapter on turning 30. For Dolly’s tour, visit faneproductions.com/dolly
what a luxury it is to have a space in w hi chi can do exactly as i please