For as long as I can remember, I have always hated eating alone. As a travel writer, that has proven quite problematic. Though I’m often hitting the road with friends, a photographer, or another writer, I am not ashamed to admit that when I’m alone, I usually forgo dinner; often opting for room service instead. I am baffled when I talk to travelers who actively enjoy going out for dinner by themselves, leading me to believe eating alone is an odd thing to fear. It never has and probably never will be one of my life’s pleasures—and in therapy, I’ve finally uncovered why.
It all comes back to when I was a little girl (inner child shadow work for the win!). Around age six, I began moving all over the United States with my family as my parents pursued job promotions. Though I have an older sister, we’re five years apart, and after our second move, she went off to college. From that point forward, leaning on her to save me at school wasn’t an option. I still remember walking into the cafeteria in the states I moved to (Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Florida, to name a few) and looking around at the sea of people in the cafeteria. Nearly trembling, holding my lunch bag to my chest, I would look around for someone, anyone, to call me over to their table. Sometimes they did. But most of the time, especially during those initial few weeks, I ate in the bathroom.
How that manifests as a woman in my 30s is this: Breakfast on my own can be quite enjoyable, and I even find it pleasant to have an afternoon lunch at a sunny café. But eating alone at dinnertime? Forget about it. That’s the moment in the day when my cafeteria recall is at its most profound; when families, lovers, and friends are dining together, enjoying each other’s company and the ease that intimacy brings. Dining alone, in that scenario, brings up the feeling of being an outsider, of not belonging, of feeling like the other.
Recently, I was forced to face my fear of dining alone when my friend backed out of a six-week trip through Europe the night before we were set to take flight. We had a big itinerary—hiking the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain, attending my friend’s wedding outside of Rome, and island-hopping in the Balearics, to name a few—and as I boarded my flight from Mexico City to Paris, I realized traveling alone wasn’t my fear. It never had been. It was all those dinners that lay ahead—ones where I’d inevitably have to eat alone.
Though most of my trip involved meeting up with friends who lived in Europe, there was one segment I knew would prove particularly tricky: a multi-night stay at the luxurious Castell Son Claret in Mallorca. I know what you’re probably thinking: Give me a break, you’re staying at a castle on a sunny Spanish island! And you’re not wrong. Yet I had imagined this stay as a lavish girlfriend getaway, but now I would be alone for the entirety of it. Everything on my itinerary looked fine, except for one little thing: I was set to dine at the Michelin-star Sa Clastra on my own.
By the time I arrived in Mallorca, I had already had a few sessions with my spiritual teacher. We had both agreed that getting ditched on my six-week trip could be interpreted as a divine opportunity to overcome my fear of dining alone: “You can either learn the lesson now or later—it’s your choice,” she said, and recommended I read Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliot. I tore through the book, furiously tabbing and highlighting most of its pages, while being exposed to truth bombs like “Having is evidence of wanting” and “Fear is just excitement without breath,” as the author quoted psychotherapist Fritz Perls. I realized Elliot was right. I do get off on the things that I don’t like about myself. I filled in her prompt: “I have a kinky, weird, fucked-up desire to make eating alone the most horrifying experience ever, one where I look like a loser who no one wants to eat with because it reiterates my belief that I have and never will belong anywhere. Just ’cause I’m a nasty freak like that.”
When I realized my mental block of eating alone was merely an old story on replay, I made it my task to enjoy every single moment of eating alone. I realized at some subconscious level, I needed that. And what transpired was marvelous. On the last night of my stay in Mallorca—after a long, luxurious spa appointment—I got dressed up in my nicest outfit and walked into Sa Clastra. The old me (the pre-Existential Kink, scared-of-dining-alone me) would have canceled and ordered room service instead. But not today. I went to that meal, and I walked into that restaurant, proud to be there—proud to be there, alone.
I relished every single moment, and began to think about this trip as a moment of defiance from me to the world. As each course came out, I made a point of inquiring about ingredients and where they were sourced. I asked questions about the wine and asked for more. I ate herbed bread with layers upon layers of citrusy butter. I enjoyed every bite of every course down to the very last morsel of dessert: a milky panna cotta with smoked meringue cream. I found an almost erotic enjoyment in being alone and in dining alone.
And at that moment, it’s like something clicked. I realized that I had unlocked an entirely new level of self-worth and satisfaction: all from my defiant act of not only traveling alone, but dining alone at a Michelin-star restaurant, and finding pleasure in every layer of the experience. As Elliot notes, it was an experience I had made manifest—one all of my own, kinky creation.