For a good five to ten years of my life I truly believed that I wanted to live alone for at least part of my life. There was a small part of me that wanted to go off, buy some land somewhere, build a house, start a farm and live completely self-sufficiently and never have to interact with the world. It wasn't so much "oh I hate the world and don't like people" as it was "there are so many problems in the world that it would be easier to just slip away from them instead of having to confront the fact that I don't know how or don't have the power to fix them". The other larger part of me realized that was a rather unrealistic dream especially because before I was able to do any of that I'd have to make enough money to actually have the capital to get started. Anyway, up until a few weeks ago, I longed to have a place of my own that was just mine, and not mine in a creepy Gollum-y my precious way, just something that no one else had claim to, a place to hide away from other influences, I don't know.
In coming to Brussels I have completely cut myself away from my normal social circle. And the fact that I am living alone and that I am only here for 10 weeks make it really difficult to form a new circle. I'm living in one of the biggest cities in Europe and, most of the time, I still feel completely alone. I used to believe that I could and, moreover, wanted to live alone. If Brussels does me no other good, it has taught me that I can do it but that I never ever want to again. I'd always thought I was a solitary creature but I need some degree of personal connection and I'm afraid I just don't have the time to do that while I'm here.
Ironically, or fortuitously, depending on how you look at it, one of the books I brought with me is Thoreau's Walden. I may not have gone off into the woods and lived alone for two years but I feel like I've come pretty close.
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