My Experience Living Alone
Living alone may be someone's dream and another's nightmare. To me, living alone has always been my fantasy ever since I was little. Fortunately, I had the chance to live alone when I moved to Korea to attend University when I was twenty, after having lived with my family in Singapore. Since then, I have been living alone for three years and in this course of three years, I have experienced the numerous pros and cons to living alone.
There are countless of perks of living alone. The biggest perk of living alone is, without a doubt, freedom. Living with my parents and older brother under the same roof for twenty years made it difficult and almost impossible for me to experience freedom. The constant knocking on my door by my brother trying to borrow money, my mother yelling at me to help her with the chores, and inhaling the cigarette smoke from my father made me despise living with my family.
Living alone, however, I am free from my family and have the freedom to do whatever I want. I can go to bed at 6 in the morning and wake up at noon without having to feel guilty or getting yelled at by my parents for my bad sleeping pattern. I can also laze around all day long while playing video games, watching television programs, and taking afternoon naps without having anyone to judge me. My parents, being typical Asian parents, are quite strict, especially when it comes to being diligent. Therefore, when I was living with them, I had to adhere to a pretty strict daily routine where I had to wake up early to do my chores, study, and basically be as productive as I possibly can. Though this routine was effective in making me productive, I was constantly feeling stressed and always felt guilty whenever I was not being productive like taking an afternoon nap. Living alone definitely allows me to live out my stress-free and lazy lifestyle which I feel, to a certain extent, is important in keeping a person sane and happy.
Not having a curfew is another big perk of living alone. Being a university student, I do enjoy the occasional drinking and partying scene and not having a curfew did help me enjoy the partying a little more. One of my favorite memories of drinking with my friends is the time when I was drinking with one of my close friends at the school bench. When it got to around three in the morning, it started pouring. Without a word, my friend and I whipped out our umbrellas immediately and continued drinking in the rain till six in the morning. Though I did catch a slight cold the next day, it is a precious memory that I share with my friend. Such precious memories would have been difficult to create if I was not living alone. Curing a hangover is also definitely easier when living alone. With my parents around, they would nag and reprimand me for drinking excessively which would make my hangover worse. However, when I am living alone, I can just sleep off my hangover without having to hear my parents' constant nagging.
Absence truly makes the heart grow fonder as living alone has improved my relationship with my family. As my family lives in Singapore, I get to see them at most twice a year. Thus, when my family gets together, we try to make the most out of it and treat each other the best that we can. The number of times my family and I argue has drastically gown down ever since I started living alone as I have experienced loneliness whilst living alone, and have come to realize the importance of family which makes me respect and treasure my family.
Though living alone comes with countless of perks, it does come with many downsides as well. Financial stress is one of the biggest downsides of living alone. Ever since I started living alone, I had to buy all my food and necessities with the limited allowance given by my parents. Who knew that toilet paper could cost so much? I remember once when I had around 10,000 won left and a week before my next allowance. I had no choice but to live off of instant noodles for that week. Even though I love instant noodles, I cannot say that I enjoyed that week.
Another downside to living alone is the insecurity and fear I felt. I constantly fear that someone is going to break into my house or that an insect will appear in my room. When I was living with my parents, I always felt safe. Whenever there was an insect in my room, all I had to do was call for my father or brother to catch it for me. However, living alone, I have to catch all the insects that appear in my room which is a frightening task each time. There was once when I was drifting off to sleep when I heard a deafening shriek coming from the corner of my room. It sounded like an animal in pain. In the moment of darkness, I had the strong belief that the shriek belonged to a rat. The fear I felt during that moment was indescribable. When the shrieking continued, I had no idea what to do as I was frozen with fear. I ended up calling my friend who lived nearby and begged him to come over and catch the rat. My friend grew up in Africa and had a few experiences catching rats himself. He came over, equipped with gloves and an umbrella, to catch the rat. He searched my room from corner to corner and luckily, no rat was found. The next day, the shrieking still continued and I called the house owner who explained to me that those shrieks belonged to birds which get into the ceiling from time to time. My friends and I, to this day, joke about this incident which was terrifying yet hilarious.
My experience living alone has had its ups and downs but overall, I had, and am having a wonderful time living alone. Living alone definitely taught me the hardships that come at the expense of the freedom and taught me to treasure the things that I was not able to before living alone.
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