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Living alone. Once, perhaps, it was a designation that you were an old maid, destined to someday die alone and be devoured by your cat, if you were lucky. But what if that single life could be forever sustained? The stereotypes of the spinster cat lady or the hopeless, hapless bachelor, subsisting on TV dinners and bad Chinese takeout, comforting himself with the warmth of the occasional lady friend, or the television-cum-laptop, are only based on the occasional extreme: Certainly, in years prior to now, singles have existed happily and successfully on their own. Some more so than the coupled among us.
Moving out of your parents' house or a college dorm shared with assigned roommates and into an apartment with friends is one rite of passage into adulthood. The next, chronologically speaking, would be finding the funds and the wherewithal to live by yourself -- an ultimate luxury, if you can manage it, in these crowded spaces. And after that, at least historically, would come pairing up again, moving in with a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, partner...and eventually, should you see fit, adding new members to your living space.
Thus, you chart the course from child to adulthood with those single and alone years a bookmark of freedom, a time you had to take care of you and only you, a time you could eat Doritos on the couch all night and perhaps even fall asleep with them next to you, only wash the dishes when you disgusted yourself, stay out all night and never be nagged about it the next day. A time of ultimate, temporary freedom, to be looked back upon with a sense of having sowed wild oats, or at the very least, a resigned but satisfied "that was then -- this is now."