Last year, I moved into an apartment where I would live alone for the first time. As I unpacked, I felt light-headed from the realization that my belongings would not have to negotiate for space with anyone else’s. I placed my containers of pasta and tea into empty kitchen cabinets, hung my art and posters on tabula rasa walls. I embraced the new experience of being able to leave the sink full of dirty dishes without annoying anyone (that is, aside from my future self, who would have to wash them eventually). After living with housemates for almost a decade, being alone in an apartment felt strange, untethered. It also felt a bit like freedom.

My ambivalent feelings about aloneness are amplified by our present moment. The lingering effects of Covid-19 lockdowns and the algorithmic echo chambers of social media have created a world in which solitude appears to ...