The Healthyish Guide to Being Alone

This story is part of the Healthyish Guide to Being Alone, a month-long series of tips, recipes, and stories about how to be alone when we’re together and together when we’re alone.

Healthyish friends,

Before we were shot into a pandemic-themed pinball machine, before we were careening around in a reality we don’t understand and can’t seem to control, I wanted to make a guide to being single.

It was going to be about the joys of eating alone at your favorite restaurant. What to make for dinner on the third date. The best solo vacations we’ve ever taken. It was going to be light-hearted and fun.

Then came the pinball machine. Now there are no restaurants to eat at, alone or otherwise. Third dates are postponed indefinitely along with all the other dates. In a lot of ways, a guide to being single has become irrelevant. And yet, as we transition to what everyone keeps calling “the new normal” (No! I keep thinking. Nothing about this will ever be normal!) I’ve noticed that all of us, single and otherwise, are figuring out how to be alone.

I’m fielding overwhelmed texts from friends shacked up with roommates and in-laws. Children are flying across my co-workers’ Zoom screens. A person I went on one date with before all this is in a cabin with his ex in the Adirondacks (true story). And plenty of us are reckoning with true isolation for the first time, our houseplants quickly becoming our closest friends.

I’m in that last category, and, in case you were curious, I’ve named my plants after the seven dwarves. (I’m Snow White, obviously.) When I moved into my own apartment a year ago, it was the first time I’d lived alone, no roommates and no partner. I was in the midst of a very different sort of crisis then—it was stressful and sad, and there was some scary health stuff too, but it was personal, not global. It was probably the most challenging period of my life to date, but I never felt alone. I had friends here almost every night, family visiting, soon enough I was dating again. I told everyone how much I loved living by myself in New York, that it was a childhood dream, and it was all true.

This time around, the health crisis is everywhere. The stress is everywhere too, and so is the grief. So instead of a guide to being single, this is a month-long series about being alone, and it’s for everyone. Throughout April, we’ll run stories, recipes, and advice that will hopefully help you find some mental solace, whatever your living situation might be. We’re turning everyone’s favorite Healthyish Instagram segment, 30 Seconds With Andy, into an advice column. We’re coming clean about our Secret Single Cooking. We’ll tell you about the pot that every solo cook should have, how to get into the virtual dating game, and what it’s like to be single and pregnant while in isolation.

Look, we’ve got a lot of big problems right now. Being alone is maybe not at the top of the list, but, as the days and weeks stretch on, we’re going to get tired of Zoom parties. We’re going to hit cooking ruts. We’re going to stop shaving our legs (me, already). We’re going to see each other through cycles of grief and anger and panic and, yes, joy. Somehow, we’ve got to figure out how to be alone when we’re together and together when we’re alone.

I hope you’ll find this series helpful. Over the course of the month, we’ll add new stories to the list below. Email healthyish@condenast.com if there’s something in particular you want to see, and thank you for being with us. We're with you, too.

Sincerely,

Amanda Shapiro
Healthyish Editor