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I was sitting in a waiting room while my daughter was in surgery, passing the time on my phone, when my mum sent me a message. She asked if my husband was there with me. He wasn’t. Then she said, “You shouldn’t be there alone.”
I remember chuckling to myself and asking her why not. She said I should have support, and I understood what she meant. For many people, waiting rooms are the sort of place where you want someone beside you, someone to talk to while the time passes. But for me, being there alone didn’t feel wrong at all. It felt completely normal.
What I thought, reading her message, was something I have thought many times before. Not unkindly, just honestly. Mum. You have known me my whole life. Why do you still not know this about me?
My grandmother had the same reaction when she found out. She rang and asked if I was all right, and I could hear the concern in her voice, genuine and sweet. She has never liked being alone in her own house, and I understood that she was speaking from that place. It was tender, really. I wanted to reach through the phone and reassure her that I was perfectly fine, that I was quite enjoying the quiet if anything.
This is not a new quality. It has been part of me for as long as I can remember.
When my father passed away, I was nine. I didn’t cry in front of anyone, not because I was holding something back, but because I genuinely didn’t feel the need to. Later, on my own, I cried quietly, and that felt far more natural than doing it in front of other people would have. Years later, when my stepfather died, my mum collapsed when she got the call. Someone had to stay steady, and I did. Not because I chose to take on that role, but because that is simply how I respond. I carried on through the flight, through the family gatherings, and through the funeral without falling apart. Not because I felt nothing. Because I don’t experience things the way most people seem to.
When my husband has been away for stretches, my grandmother would always ask if I wanted to come and stay with her so I wasn’t alone. Every time, I would thank her and tell her I was fine. Every time, I meant it. My mum never questioned it in the same way, perhaps because she understood from her own experience that a woman can manage perfectly well on her own when she needs to. But my grandmother couldn’t quite accept it, and I never once held that against her. She asked because she would have hated it. I stayed home because I didn’t.
Over time, I’ve noticed the way people respond to this quality in me. There is often a look, a slight pause, as if they are trying to work out whether I am holding something back or simply not feeling what I am supposed to feel. It isn’t usually said directly. It is just there. As if I am a bit odd.
But there is nothing missing. I am not covering anything up, and I am not trying to appear unaffected. This is simply how I am. I process things quietly and then I move forward.
Sitting in that waiting room, watching people come and go, I didn’t feel anxious or unsettled. I didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. I didn’t feel that I should have someone beside me simply because that is what people expect in that sort of moment.
I was exactly where I needed to be.
For some people, being alone like that would feel overwhelming. For me, it feels like space. Space to think, space to sit quietly, space to let things settle without noise or interruption. That has always been enough for me.
So when someone says I shouldn’t be alone, I understand what they mean. They are speaking from what would feel right to them.
But that isn’t how it feels to me. And after all this time, I have stopped being surprised that people find that surprising.
— Kate
I have been content on my own for as long as I can remember.
My grandmother likes to tell a story about me as a toddler. I was in one of those old wooden playpens, happily occupied. If I wanted out, I would remove a slat, climb out, have a look about while my mother was napping, and then climb back in.
Not because I was trapped.
Because I was content.
My mother says I didn’t cry much. I didn’t fuss. I wasn’t dramatic. I was observant. Quiet. Self-contained. She says this as though she is still slightly puzzled by it, even now.
For most of my life, I never thought much about it. I did not feel misunderstood or wrong. I simply assumed everyone processed the world internally the way I did. It took some years to realise that was not quite the case, and a few more to understand why some people found that surprising about me.
Friendships were uncomplicated, which was perhaps made easier by the fact that most of my friends were boys, both growing up in England and after we moved to the States. There was very little emotional analysis, very little drama. We talked, we laughed, we moved on. When something hurt, I thought about it privately and then got on with things. It wasn’t suppression. It was regulation. And it suited me perfectly well.
As I grew older, I began to notice how differently some people move through the world. Some need to speak their thoughts aloud to make sense of them. Some need regular reassurance. Some need visible affection and affirmation in quantities that would exhaust me simply to think about. I do not say that unkindly. People are wired differently. I have simply always been wired rather quietly.
I have always needed very little of any of that.
That independence has served me well. It has made me capable and resilient. It has allowed me to stand on my own two feet without placing much demand on anyone else. I am not a worrier. I do not spiral. I am rarely overwhelmed, and on the occasions when something does land heavily, I process it quietly and move forward without much fuss.
But I sometimes wonder what it costs, being the steady one. People assume you are fine because you present as fine. They assume nothing hurts because you do not make it visible. They assume you prefer to handle things alone because you always seem to manage it.
And honestly, they are usually right.
Being reserved does not mean being empty. It simply means the waters run deep and still, rather than loud and visible.
People rely on me, and I don’t particularly mind that, up to a point. There is something straightforward about being trusted to hold things together. But steadiness, I have noticed, has a way of becoming an expectation rather than a gift, and I am not infinitely patient with that distinction being lost on people.
The girl in the playpen did not need rescuing. She was content in her own company, curious about the world on her own terms, and perfectly capable of letting herself out when she chose to.
The woman she became is much the same. She loves the people in her life fully and without reservation. And she knows, quietly and without drama, that whatever comes her way, she would be alright. There is a particular kind of freedom in that knowledge. Not coldness. Not distance. Just the steady, certain understanding that she was built to stand.
— Kate
Kate Alderwick 