I'm alone right now, right this minute, and I love it.

I am rarely alone. I share an apartment with two girls. I am always on the go: heading out of town, leaving one place and going to meet someone at another.

It's not like I come from a big immediate family; I didn't share a bedroom growing up. However, for some unknown reason, I have always cherished my time alone. The few hours after school during the years my brother was in college and both parents were working, when I could roam the house and talk to myself, or not speak at all. I remember just walking up and down the length of the house as a teenager, listening to the sound of my shoes on the hardwood floor and watching myself in the reflection of windows, mirrors and even the refrigerator door.

I know a lot of people who can't be alone, who absolutely hate it. Those people make me feel like there is something wrong with me, for craving my alone time.

I do well with roommates. I've always had long-term roommates, even when I was a crazy college coed stumbling in with strangers at all hours. I think that overall, I convey a great respect for other people's privacy, even when living with them. I don't go into their rooms without knocking and waiting for them to reply.

I do this at work also, even though we may have no doors. I am a huge proponent of personal space, unless invited in. I usually knock on a door frame, or wait a few steps away from a cubicle until the person looks up and greets me.

I've noticed that other people don't have these kind of boundaries. That's something that irks me. There are people I work with who stand immediately behind me when I am on a work call, and sometimes they will even lay their hands on my shoulders and wait.

I hate that. I don't like to be touched unless I have invited you to touch me - if we have that kind of relationship.

Back to being alone. I wonder what that says about me? I wonder if this trait is a limiting one, if it's holding me back from being with someone? I'd like to think it isn't, because even though being in a relationship would be great, I never want give up my individualistic spirit. There are things that I want to just be mine. A room of one's own, in a way.

Someone said to me recently, you find hilarity in everything. I never thought of it, but it's true. I even find laughter in pain.

Life is too magnificent to not glorify it, to not laugh back at it when it gets all serious and dark.

Right now my life is anything but dark. It's lighthearted and filled with mirth.

Even better is this day I am spending alone.

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