If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know that I live alone.

I’m sure this conjures up images of Bridget Jones for most. “That poor, sad, single girl. Living alone with her dog with nothing to stare at but four walls and living on a diet of microwave meals for one and vodka.”

Yes.  Sometimes living alone can get quite lonely, but “alone” doesn’t always equal “lonely”. There are some days when I begin to feel abit sorry for myself as I cook yet another meal for one and find myself willing Ted to make like Salem the cat from Sabrina the Teenage Witch and talk but those days are overshadowed by the good times that living alone can bring.

When I was moving into my house, I did consider getting myself a housemate, a lodger – whatever they’re called these days. But I had no friends who were looking for a place to stay at thetime, and the thought of moving in with a complete stranger made my skin crawl (I’m extremely particular about my own space).

If I start to get down about microwave meals for one, no conversation before bed time or the fact that I’m constantly broke from the expense that living alone brings, I start to think of the reasons why its freaking awesome to live alone.

You can walk around naked whenever you want to and nobody cares… Well, almost nobody. A couple of weeks ago I was making Coco Pops in my kitchen whilst buck naked and I spotted a man in the window out of the corner of my eye, before I had chance to cover my modesty with the Coco Pops box he looked at me in disgust like “pft! why are you making breakfast in the nude?” so I continued in all my glory.  You can’t do this with housemates.

You get to keep the TV remote to yourself and don’t face judgemental awkwardness when you want to watch guilty pleasure shows, nor do you have to endure the pain of watching somebody elses must see TV.   Not everybody likes a bit of Storage Hoarders, surprisingly.

When I listen to my music, I like to dance like I’m a popstar.  Remember the scene in Crossroads where Britney dances on her bed?  Thats me.   The thing is, I get quite shy infront of others so I can only emulate the dance moves of the likes of Beyonce, Shakira and Britney circa 2002 when I’m alone. Completely alone.  Where there’s no risk of anybody recording said routines and putting it on YouTube.Your food is “YOUR FOOD”. If I’m going to buy an item of food stuffs from the supermarket its because I want to eat it. I don’t have the strength to come home to the fact that somebody has sticky fingered the very item I’ve been fantasising about eating naked on my sofa whist watching Storage Horders.  Even if it is a microwave meal for once – some of those babies are tasty.

When I go out I tend to make a bit of a mess. When I get home from a night out, I’m usually greeted with a house that looks like a tornado took place within it.  I end up with a bra in the kitchen, a bottle of wine in the bathroom, three different outfit changes which are strewn up the stairs and over my light shade and a bed covered in makeup.  I’m pretty sure it doesn’t look this shocking when I leave the house.  This may be something that would get on peoples nerves, as it is, its my house, my mess.  Organised chaos, if you will.

You don’t have to make conversation with somebody because its polite.  You don’t have to feign interest in their day at work or have to miss the good part of Storage Hoarders because they’re telling you an “hilarious” you-had-to-be-there story about something that happened in Tesco.  Its quite okay to come home from work, watch back to back episodes of Breaking Bad and take some alone time to, uhm… read/watch whatever you like.

These are all very selfish reasons, I know.  Have you ever heard that people are either “dogs” or “cats” when it comes to how they act around other people?   As much as I’m a dog person when it comes to the furball kind, I think that socially I’m a cat.  I like my alone time, I’m independent and I don’t like to be mauled.  I’m actually allergic to cats, but doesn’t that just make me sound even more anti social and cat like?