i feel like it’s not prudent to advertise that you are home alone at ten pm, but what's the wors

At some point in my life, I would like to live alone.

This has nothing to do with any kind of traumatic roommate experience; for the most part, I have really loved living with other people for the past 23 years. More importantly, my current and previous housemates make up a large portion of the readership of this blog, and AYFKM is not yet popular enough pass up future audience opportunity.

Plus, there are plenty of invaluable perks to living with a roommate, most notably that I have someone to talk to when I come home from work and someone to zipper my dress other than the person who delivers my Thai food. Also, and perhaps most importantly, I am not of the financial means to live alone, because even studio apartments are really expensive and there is no economically sound way to grocery shop for dairy products for one (you can’t just FREEZE whatever buffalo mozzarella you don’t eat before it expires!).

And yet I still would like to alone for a period of time. I'm hardly the only one who wants this. The New York Times declared that we're living "in the age of the individual," with 1 in 4 Americans and 1 in 2 Manhattanites dwelling solo. Seeing as my roommate is currently in Maryland visiting her grandmother and I am parked on the couch, take-out container resting ever so precariously on one knee and my laptop on the other (this is what we call “setting the scene”), this seems as good a time as any to come to terms with the many fears I have about living alone so that when the time comes, I will be ready to grab life by the 1-bedroom flex.

These fears include:

• That I will electrocute myself while plugging in my computer charger and die

• That I will fall out of bed while stretching to plug in my computer charger, hit my head, and die

• That I will trip while trying to adjust a pair of tights to look like there are no holes or tears, accidentally strangle myself in the pantyhose, and die

• That I will forget to lock my door one night and an intruder will enter, ask for all of my money and valuables in exchange for my life, and then kill me because I refuse to part with that black and blue circle necklace I wear all the time (there are a lot of death-related fears, but we’ll cap it at this one)

• That I will choke on box-mix brownies and die, and then people will discover that I sometimes (read: VERY, VERY RARELY) make box-mix brownies (okay, we’ll cap it at THIS one)

• That I will never wash dishes and a colony of bacteria will take up residence in my home with me, like a roommate that never pays the rent and always smells

• That I will never cook a real meal for myself because there is no one there to give me concerned looks from across the couch. For example, last night's meal consisted of a block of halloumi, a handful of raspberries, a few Trader Joes brand Triscuits, and a two mouthfuls of chewed up M&Ms followed by squirts of canned whipped cream (like a peppermint patty shot, but for people who don't own chocolate syrup or peppermint schnapps)

• That I will never wear pants again and therefore have no sense of whether or not I have gained weight

• That I will someday try to French braid my own hair and wind up with a mess so irrevocably tangled, I’ll have to chop everything off

• That I will get a lizard named Dot to keep me company, and then Dot will slowly steal everything I own, divorce me, and leave me with nothing

• That I will forget that closing the bathroom door is good social etiquette and leave it open accidentally one day at work

• That when I run out of shampoo, I'll have to use soap to wash my hair since there is no roommate shampoo to steal

• That I will start watching Glee again because no one is there to say, “hey, this show is problematic and also tries to follow too many nonsensical storylines”

• That I will never discover new music and resort to listening to the same, “Not 30, Not Flirty, Not Thriving” Spotify playlist I made my freshman year of college

• That I'll never be able to shower without panicking that the noise outside the bathroom door is not the radiator or a roommate, but a rabid human with intent to feast on human girl

• That when company comes over, I will have no one to blame strange decorating choices/a weird smell/a general mess on, and then company will cease to come over because "really? A poster of a whale reading Joan Didion? Don't you find that...super pretentious but also super strange?"

• That the first people I’ll talk to in the morning will be my coworkers, and they’ll judge me for a recurring nightmare in which Wolf Blitzer yells at me until I wake up

To anyone who shares in these fears, I hope you feel validated. I also hope that you’ll hit me up if you ever find yourself in need of a neurotic (but loveable and very hot and not crazy) roommate so I don’t have to live out these anxieties. In fact, dear listener, if you find yourself in NYC over the course of the next 48 hours of my roommate-free life, join me! Eat mozzarella and drink poor man’s peppermint patty shots with me! Calm me down after Situation Room stress-dreams! Come running in if you hear a zapping noise and un-electrocute me back to life (I think that involves rubber or something, but I could be wrong there).

I promise there will be no Glee involved.

At least not while you’re home.