For those of you who don't know me yet — I'm autistic, and I have always struggled with people. Not because I don't care about them. Because the rules never made sense to me, and yet I was expected to follow them perfectly anyway.

There's something baked into society that says you're supposed to want to be around people. Constantly. That solitude is something to fix, not something to choose. Nobody ever handed me a rulebook, but I learned the rules anyway, the hard way, by getting them wrong in front of people and feeling it:

I followed the rules. For years. Until I couldn't anymore.

I broke down one day. Seriously broke down. I was with my ex at the time, and I remember just... hitting a wall. I had enough of the people-pleasing. Enough of feeling like I owed everyone a version of myself that was easy to be around. It felt like some kind of fucking popularity contest I never signed up for, and I was losing, and I was exhausted from playing.

So I said: I can't do this anymore.

And I started spending more time alone.

Wow. Did it ever make a difference.

Just snacks, chick flicks, and me. No drama. No gossip. No replaying conversations at 2am wondering what I should have said differently. It was quiet — not just in the room, but in my own head, for the first time in a long time.

It started small. An evening here, a weekend there. And I swear, I got addicted to being alone. It was great. I thought I was funny. I made jokes just for myself and laughed at them. I did everything I actually wanted to do, on my own timeline, with nobody grading me on it.

Being home alone let me discover who I actually was — not the version of me that had to show up for society, performing all the right cues in the right order. Just me. And it turns out I like her.

So today, I'm giving you the 10 things that helped me get here.

1. I stopped scheduling "shoulds." No more visiting people just because a calendar in my head said it had been a month. If I wanted to see someone, I saw them. If I didn't, I didn't. The guilt took a while to fade, but it did.

2. I built a "no performance" zone at home. My space became the one place I didn't have to make eye contact, smile on cue, or manage anyone else's feelings. Just existing there, unmasked, was the whole point.

3. I let snacks and chick flicks be enough. Not every night alone needs to be "productive" self-care. Sometimes it's just comfort food and a movie you've seen ten times. That counts.

4. I started noticing my own sense of humor. Turns out I'm funny when no one's grading the joke. Laughing at your own thoughts, alone, in your kitchen, is a genuinely underrated form of self-discovery.

5. I gave myself permission to rest without earning it. I used to think rest had to be "deserved" through exhaustion. Alone time taught me rest is just... allowed. No qualifying required.

6. I cut the replay loop. No one to debrief the day with meant no one to spiral with about what I "should have done differently." The silence gave my brain somewhere to land instead of loop.

7. I paid attention to what I actually enjoy. Not what's "supposed" to be fun. Not what my friend group is into. What I reach for when no one's watching. That list surprised me.

8. I let my space reflect me, not guests. When you're not performing hospitality, your home can finally look and feel like you, instead of like a stage set for company.

9. I stopped apologizing for needing recovery time. Socializing has a cost for me. Alone time is how I pay it back. I stopped treating that need as a character flaw.

10. I let solitude be the default, not the deprivation. The biggest shift: I stopped framing alone time as "what's left over" after socializing, and started treating it as the baseline I get to return to. People time became the occasional guest star, not the main character.

If you've ever felt like wanting to be alone made you broken, or rude, or antisocial — I need you to hear this: it might just mean you finally found the version of yourself that doesn't need an audience. Welcome to the homebody era. Pull up a snack.

If this hit home, stick around. Finally Home Magazine is where I get real about solitude, self-discovery, and building a life that actually feels like yours — no performance required. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Your homebody era just got a lot less lonely.