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It seems like only yesterday that I was writing to you to let you know I was packing up my entire life, going to stay with my parents and in fact permanently moving back to Shropshire. By the time I move out next Saturday, it will be four and half months since the day I left London, my home for six and a half years. The day after I arrived home, after being driven by the nicest removal van ever, lockdown began and Boris Johnson made his famous address to the UK to say that we must stay at home. This means I have spent more than four months living with my parents at aged 35.
I never expected this to happen. In all my wildest dreams about moving back to Shrewsbury, none of them involved staying with my parents for more than a week or two. In fact, when my sister asked at Christmas if that is what I intended to do if I did move back I replied saying “Over my dead body.” Now I am starting to feel apprehensive about moving out. It’s partly because I’ve got so used to it and it really has become my new normal, partly because it’s been such a relief not to have to worry about rent and bills and TFL costs (I have been paying them a small amount to be fair but nothing compared to my London rent!) and partly because I’m ever so slightly worried about properly living on my own. I know I will be thrilled to have a house to myself and will probably run around naked but at the same time, I am feeling really nervous.
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I know a lot of you live alone while an equally large number of you don’t but are perhaps considering it and I think it’s a really important conversation to have among single people because we either have to choose to live solo in order to have a nice place we can call our own or we have to share a house with friends or strangers which can make you feel like you’re living an extended adolescence and is hard to make the house feel your own. Those in relationships have the extra option of living with their partner and thereby making a home together and only having one extra person to compromise with.
It’s kind of hard to admit that I am feeling a bit worried about the prospect of living alone because I’m usually such an advocate for it and how it has really improved my quality of life and even my confidence in the past. But here’s the thing, out of the three occasions I have “lived on my own”, two of them were strange situations where my flat was inside my landlord’s house.
The first time was in Spain and my new boss said he had found a flat for me and so I agreed before seeing that it was actually like a “granny flat” inside an elderly couple’s home. It was not ideal given at the time, I was 27 and wanted to go out all the time. In the end the experience was mostly fine. There was only the awkward time I had my boyfriend at the time round for dinner and the couple sent members of their family up to my flat for various pointless reasons to check what I was doing with him. The upside was whenever I forgot my key, there was always someone to let me in, I had someone to practice Spanish with and sometimes they would insist on feeding me.
The second time I lived alone was that time I had a really bad bout of depression while living in Berlin. I was staying in a very modern studio flat that was essentially a small concrete room with some very cool but functional furniture designed by architects to be the perfect spot for a weekend away. Only the AirBnB rules changed in Berlin so they were trialling letting it out for longer. I stayed for more than two months. The concrete soon became oppressive after one too many weeks lying on my bed unable to muster the energy to leave the house and I began to feel paranoid that I would get locked in the equally concrete bathroom and die a slow painful death.
The third time I lived alone was the most recent time. I somehow managed to yet again accidentally find a flat that was inside someone else’s house. The location was perfect, I was in love with the big kitchen and I thought I could put up with having a bedroom and living room rolled into one (I copied some clever people on Pinterest and used an Ikea Kallax shelf to make two distinct areas). There were also two cats living with my landlord in her flat which was spread across the ground floor and basement but they would regularly come and hang out with me, which I loved. In fact by the time I left there were actually four cats and a fifth who seemed to think he lived there.
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The downside was my landlord didn’t have the best respect for boundaries and it took me a while to make her stop barging into my space whenever she felt like it and that’s before we get onto the blazing screaming matches she would have with her 21-year-old son that would go on until the early hours of the morning. The upsides were she would let me use her garden when she went out, she also liked to feed me and when the London Bridge attack happened and she didn’t see me for a few days (I was actually away but hadn’t told her) she checked up on me. When you live in such a huge anonymous city, it was kind of nice to know someone would have noticed if something had gone very badly wrong. She would also insist on getting my supplies whenever I was sick and once when I went down to ask if I could please have a tea bag as I had run out and was gasping for a cuppa, she gave me a whole box and wouldn’t take no for an answer. The same went for when I was out of loo roll.
For the last four months I have been staying with my parents and even though I was sure I would really struggle with losing my independence, the experience has actually made me think about the value of living with others. Having company during such an anxiety-inducing time was obviously really welcome but there have been the other day to day things, which I have really appreciated. Some days I work really long hours as I’m often running events (over Zoom) into the evening. Having someone else cook for you when you’re tired and stressed is just amazing (in London I relied on doing a lot of batch cooking at the weekend or getting takeaway food in similar circumstances). It’s also been great to have my dad on hand to fix all manner of things that have broken when normally I would just leave them broken because I had no time or tools to do anything about it. Having two other people to share the burden of always making sure there has been tea bags and loo roll (and chocolate) in the house has also been good.
Of course, there are obvious downsides to living with your parents and there have been moments where I have wished to be anywhere but this house. I had this particular thought on Thursday night in fact (see the following tweet).
When you get next week’s newsletter, I’ll be in my new pad and I’m going to have to get used to doing it all myself again. Only this time I won’t have a loud Greek landlord downstairs shouting up that she has made cake and do I want some. I’ll be actually living properly on my own and it won’t be a temporary thing like it was in Berlin. I’ll also be totally responsible for looking after this house that I so coveted. I’ll have to make sure there are always teabags and loo roll in the house. There will be no-one there to know whether I have got home safe from a night out. I’ll always have to remember my key. Even if I have had a really long hard day, I’ll still have to do all the cooking and cleaning myself. I’ll have to pay all the bills myself including the whole cost of the internet and 75% of the cost of the council tax (single people only get a 25% discount on this).
When you think about it, being single and living alone means you have an awful lot of responsibility on your shoulders. People often talk about the ‘mental load’ that women have to carry even if their husbands/partners do share the housework. There are countless articles and memes about it and they all assume that everyone reading has a partner who isn’t sharing the burden of making sure there are tea bags in the house and that the bills are paid. These articles don’t take into account the millions of people of both genders who live alone and so therefore automatically have to carry all of the mental load as well as the physical load of actually doing the chores.
Anyway, I could talk for hours about this but I just want to salute you if you are single and live alone because along with all the benefits (and don’t worry I still remember there are lots!), comes a lot of responsibility. Extra kudos to you if you were living alone through lockdown and even more kudos to you if you are a single parent having to also keep your kids alive on top of everything else.
Have a great week,
Nicola
Twitter: @TheSingleSupp | Instagram: @TheSingleSupplement
What caught my attention
All Breakups Are For The Best, Even This One
This is Shani Silver’s last ever column for Refinery29, which is really sad because it was so refreshing for me to discover the column just as I was getting seriously fed up which the shit content out there for single women. Shani’s column, which didn’t focus on dating and didn’t focus on being miserable, was a breath of fresh air. Do read the last one because it’s a banger. I particularly love this paragraph as it’s something I said to Shani when I was a guest on her podcast - that sometimes I worry I am telling the universe I just want to be single by talking about it so much. She writes: “Being happy being single does not communicate to the relationship gods that you don’t want a boyfriend. That needs to be made clear right fucking now. It’s a false narrative, the notion that if you lean into singlehood, and see it for all its good parts, that you’re somehow signalling to the universe that you don’t want a partnership. You’re not.”
Florence Given: The Cake & Crumbs Relationship Theory (Alonement podcast)
Francesca Specter’s Alonement podcast is back for a second season! This is the first episode back and I think a lot of you will enjoy it if you haven’t listened already. If you don’t know Florence, she is an illustrator and Instagram sensation and now author (her first book Women Don’t Owe You Pretty is on the Sunday Times bestseller list). She is the woman behind the slogans ‘Dump Him’ and ‘Don’t Raise Him He’s Not Your Son’, which you might have seen on t-shirts (I want both but they don’t seem to be on sale anymore, boo!). This episode deals with Florence’s experience of learning to be alone but she also talks about relationships using a metaphor to do with cake, which I will let you listen to yourself.
How can I stop being attracted to deeply damaged men?
This is a question for the Guardian’s advice column where readers are invited to respond to someone asking for help. I have my own one-word answer to the above question - therapy - but there are a lot of great and potentially useful things written in the comments. To see them, scroll down to comments and click to read more. Here’s an example of the advice: “The first step is to spot the pattern as you have done. When I noticed that I was repeatedly attracted to older, abusive, unavailable men, I stopped dating completely and really got to know myself. I discovered my real self-worth. I do a lot of personal development work. I still have my struggles, but I am in a kind and caring marriage and I have two wonderful children. There is hope OP, I promise you.”
The lowdown
Hello and welcome to all my new followers. I have had a flurry of sign-ups this week which was exciting. I’m so happy you are here. You can also become a member of the Facebook community group if you would like to chat to other single people from all over the world.
I was a guest on Mel Johnson’s The Stork and I podcast! I was a bit nervous to share this as once again I was VERY honest in it and whenever I am really open, I start to get that old vulnerability hangover. However, I had someone message me saying how much the episode helped them so that has made up for it. Listen in our conversation about the pressure women in their 30s feel, why the fairytale happy ending doesn’t exist and why I took myself off the dating market. Have a listen here.
In case you missed it, Tiffany Philippou and I are running the second in our series of masterclasses about life writing on August 10th. This time we’ll be going into more depth about pitching and coming up with new story ideas. You can book it here. We are also doing the first masterclass again as it sold out so if you missed it in June, book here.
Membership to The Single Supplement
I am excited to announce after doing my survey and getting some advice from experts I am going to be refining my offer for the paid-for version of this newsletter. People who choose to sign up will now not only be helping support the free version of the newsletter but will also get an extra email from me mid-week. This will usually take the form of me answering a question or problem from a reader.
I was inspired to do this as I get so many questions or people asking for advice and I have started to think it’s a shame not to share my answers with others as actually they are often universal in their nature and other people might find them useful. I will obviously be asking permission and all questions will be shared anonymously. I have always wanted to have an agony aunt column after becoming obsessed with Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar column so I’m excited to give it a go.
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Please consider signing up to become a member if you can afford it. Subscription to The Single Supplement is just £1 a week and you also get exclusive interviews with my Q&A guests as well as extra recommendations and now an extra email a week!
To summarise, if you sign up you will receive:
Exclusive interviews with awesome single people once a month that only subscribers can access.
An extra recommendation each week that I will curate based on what I believe you will find interesting.
Exclusive access to my new Agony Aunt column which will be full of useful and practical advice (and hopefully good writing!) every Wednesday.
Monthly Ask Me Anything sessions, which I am launching soon.
The chance to respond to newsletters and connect with other readers over Substack.
The knowledge you are supporting a freelance creative do her work in a challenging economy.
My undying love and gratitude.
About me
For those who don’t know, I’m Nicola Slawson, a freelance journalist who lives in Shropshire, UK. If you would like to support what I do, please consider subscribing to be a paid supporter of The Single Supplement. If you would prefer to make a one-off contribution, you can also buy me a coffee, here’s the link to my Ko-Fi page. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter.
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