The Paradox of Freedom: Navigating between Independence and Loneliness

By Stella Violet

I’ve been a prisoner in my own mind for as long as I can remember. 

I can pinpoint the moment it happened.

I was nine, crying in my moms arms because I was struggling to breathe, I was having my first panic attack. 

That feeling was all too familiar for her. She held me in her arms and told me everything was going to be okay. 

In that moment, my mother broke the generational curse of sweeping mental illness under the rug. Instead of feeding me lies and telling me to ignore my feelings, she met me with comfort. 

As an only child, I grew up alone. I had so much spare time that I’d often fill the silence with silly songs I wrote on the piano or playing the same CD over and over until my ears bled. 

I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone and having to address the thoughts inside my head, so nothing was ever quiet. 

When I turned sixteen my anxiety became worse. Some days I would beg my mom to stay home because I was so scared I’d have a panic attack in front of my friends. 

Too terrified to let my friends see the “bad” side of me and too anxious to be left alone with my thoughts. 

I began to spiral out of control, and knew something had to change. I confided in my mother and told her if I didn’t get help I’d only get worse. 

So, I went to see a therapist for the first time. 

I felt shame, confusion and guilt as I stepped into a giant concrete building in a random strip mall in the suburbs. 

But I did it, and I did it alone. 

My therapist wore a yellow polka dot dress and plaid tights and didn’t really make sense half of the time, but at least she pretended to listen to me.

Most of the time she would just kind of graze over everything I said and nod her head when I told her how I was feeling.

At the end of my first session she diagnosed me with “seasonal” depression and generalized anxiety disorder. 

She told me that the best way to handle this diagnosis was to “just to know myself.” 

And, I was not going to let that answer slide without an angsty teenage response. 

“Oh yes, that’s the answer!” I sarcastically said out loud. “Let me just sit myself down in front of a mirror while I answer “get to know you” questions off Google.” 

My therapist sat there with a profound look on her face. 

I was so confused. 

“Yes! That’s exactly what you should do!” she said with a smile. 

She told me that our time was up and prescribed me the starter dosage of Prozac and sent me on my way. 

I left her office laughing so hard and drove home while I subconsciously talked to myself about how weird she was. 

Once I pulled into my driveway, I realized that I had just had a full conversation with myself on my thirty minute drive home. And, even though I felt a bit crazy I didn’t feel as depressed as I was an hour ago. 

That was, however, the only good advice she ever gave me. I saw her maybe three times after that before I ghosted her. 

I was on Prozac for four months as I finished up my senior year of high school before deciding to move two hours away from home for college. 

I was seventeen years old and thought the key to happiness was being on my own. 

It wasn’t. 

I quit Prozac cold turkey the first week I moved and decided being alone meant I was independent. 

Being “independent” felt great at first. I paid my own bills, did all of my homework and cleaned my room. 

But after a few months of repetitive nativity, that empty-feeling was back. 

I did everything to kill that part of myself that I hated. I tried to find love and failed miserably. I made new friends trying to replace the old. I did everything in power to create a new life for myself and still somehow ended up completely alone. 

It was all too familiar and terrifying. I was numb and lost, and felt like the world was crumbling around me with no way to get to the surface.

I wrote down my feelings and talked to myself, but nothing seemed to get me out of this depressive cycle. 

I remember reading that one quote about being in a crowded room but still feeling so alone and finding sinful comfort knowing other people could relate. 

I couldn’t differentiate between independence and loneliness, it was exhausting. 

I fought with myself for hours on the bathroom floor trying to figure out if I was depressed or just had too much time on my hands. 

I still don’t know the answer, but I do know what went wrong in those first few years of adulthood. 

I learned that it wasn’t my friends or environment that needed to change, it was me. And, no matter how far I traveled my thoughts would follow me wherever I go. 

So, I moved back home. I took the time to work on my relationships. I worked through a lot with my mother and created boundaries with friends. 

I spent time alone for a while and learned not to feel bad or guilty about it, but to enjoy the peace and quiet. 

And, I let myself open up to my friends and people I care about about how I was feeling. 

I knew bottling up my feelings would just cause me to end up sticking my head in an oven like Sylvia Plath, alone and misunderstood.

There are still days where I hate the world and myself, but I know that I have people to talk to rather than send myself into self-isolation. 

My issue was never being independent, it was that I confused self-induced loneliness for independence. 

The two are a thinly placed fine line that a teenage girl anxiously wanting to escape her own mind could have never seen.

Three years later, at 20, I think I know less than I had previously thought, but I’ve learned to accept that it’s okay to not have all the answers. 

And, if seventeen-year-old me could see the person I’ve become, she’d be pretty happy.