Face the Fear, Laura’s Story: Laura faces her fears of being alone

As part of my new blog series, Face the Fear, I will be interviewing women about how they have faced their fears and what they went through to get to where they are now.

This series is tapping into the minds of incredible women, who have one way or another faced their fears. You can read the original Face the Fear blog post to find out why I wanted to write this and what my own fears are.

Today I’m interviewing Laura, who is talking about how she faced her fear of being alone. This is definitely a tough one and I hope you can find Laura’s story as inspirational as I have. You can follow Laura on her Twitter @laura_c_sweeney and her Instagram @sweeney3480.

Tell me a bit about yourself? What do you do, what do you love, where are you from?

My name is Laura, I’m 39 and I live in Swindon, although I was born and bred in Dublin. The story of how I ended up in Swindon is long and boring. By day I work for a financial services company, doing an admin job that mostly involves checklists and spreadsheets. By night I write. I write commercial fiction, short stories, and even a bit of Harry Potter fanfic. I’ve managed to complete two novels and I’m just in the process of self-editing them before trying to find an agent. I’ve only been writing for a couple of years but it’s changed me, and my life.

What is the fear you’re going to be writing about today?

If my fear had a name, I’d say it was a fear of being alone. That sounds like a really odd thing for an introvert to say, but it’s really more a fear of being emotionally alone, of not being in a loving relationship, of being “left on the shelf” as people used to say.

How long have you had this fear/what made it start to develop?

I’ve always had an issue with self-confidence and self-esteem. I’ve never been one to push myself into groups, and find making friends difficult. I remember as a young child, maybe around 6, being on my own in the playground at school and thinking to myself that if the other kids wanted to play with me they would come and ask me to join them. My default setting is to presume people don’t want to spend time with me or to be my friend. As I got older this led to me finding it very difficult to form romantic relationships. I tended to presume blokes wouldn’t be interested in me, so as a teenager I never pursued my crushes or made the first move. It wasn’t until I started uni and discovered alcohol that I began to be a bit more outgoing. My social awkwardness was reinforced by the fear that I was going to be alone forever because I wasn’t attractive, or funny, or flirtatious. And in turn, my fear grew as I got older and was no closer to finding someone to spend the rest of my life with. It was a nasty spiral, and it got very dark for a while.

When/why did you realise you had to face your fear?

I married young, at 24. I accepted the proposal of a man I’d been dating for three months. With hindsight, I can now see that this was because of my fear of never finding someone. Eleven years later and my world was turned upside down when I realised my marriage was over. I won’t go into the details of what happened (not only would you be here all day, but it would spoil the plot of my next novel), but it became apparent that it wasn’t going to last. In reality, the signs had been there for years, but I chose to ignore them, partly because I didn’t think I’d find anyone else and I was afraid of being alone.

How did you face your fear?

It came down to a choice – either I could stay in a broken, unsatisfying, unhappy relationship, which was liable to lead me to a nervous breakdown or I could get out. Getting out meant facing the world alone, at the age of 35. It meant having to run a house
on my own, keep the cat alive on my own, be on my own. But the situation was such that I realised that if I was going to survive, I was going to have to do it alone. So I called time on the marriage and walked away. Well, I stayed, he left.  It was really hard. Even the smallest things, like coming home from work to a dark house, had to be overcome (I bought, and fitted, a light switch timer).

Nearly four years later, I still live alone – and I love it. I love the freedom to do what I want, when I want. I like that I don’t have to check with anyone before I make plans. The fear hasn’t gone away. There are still days when I get down about not having someone to share things with, to laugh with, to have a physical relationship with, but I’m proud of myself that I’m, not only surviving but thriving. My confidence has grown, although I’m still a socially awkward introvert. I still want to find someone to share my life with, but I’m no longer afraid of a future where I don’t.

Thank you so much to Laura for sharing her story, this was a difficult one to read and I think Laura is so brave for writing this. I hope you guys can take something from it. 

If you’d like to get involved in this blog series, please email me at beth@booksnest.co.uk and I’ll send you through everything you need.