Newsletter 5 - New Year's Eve Alone
A wholesome and lonesome start of the year...
It’s the start of a new year!
As 2023 drew to a close, I told myself that I would see in the new year alone, nestled away in my own house with only my loyalest Ivy (my dog) by my side. In the end, my sister joined us for our big night in — we dressed in our pyjamas, watched Roald Dahl film adaptations and were both asleep barely 10 minutes past midnight. It was lovely, but I definitely wasn’t alone. This year, to welcome in 2025, I made the same plan. But I had a last minute invite to not be alone, and so, once again, I spent it in company.
I realise now how odd this wish might sound — many of us dread the idea of spending midnight on the 1st January by ourselves. In fact, this weird obsession might even be taken for ungratefulness. After all, there will probably come a time when I will have to start the year alone and not want to, so surely I should enjoy the company while I have it? I think part of me feels the need to prove to myself how fine I am with being by myself these days, which is arguably unnecessary. But then I realised… I have actually spent New Years Eve alone before… although it wasn’t the New Years Eve we know and fear in the UK.
In 2011, I accidentally spent Balinese New Year (Nyepi Day) by myself.
At twenty-two, six months after finishing my degree, I packed a gigantic, powder-blue backpack that sat half a foot above my head when I wore it and followed a childhood friend to Australia. A few weeks in, as we zipped up the Gold Coast and across to the Western wine regions, my friend decided that she wanted to stay in Melbourne indefinitely. I, however, had other ideas in my head and ants in my pants. And so, I began my first ever uncomfortable, overwhelming foray into solo-backpacking — only to find that I secretly didn’t really enjoy travelling by myself, or backpacking at all. I felt vulnerable by myself, I was very ignorant and never really had any idea what I was doing and I hated sleeping in dirty, cramped hostels. But I persevered, camping in the red, red desert that hummed with flies, spending weeks sleeping on the floor in Sydney of a friend of a friend of a friend. I subsisted on bananas and cheap, Thai food.
After a while of wandering, I wondered what it was exactly that I was missing about backpacking and why others were so enamoured with it when I wasn’t. I left Australia and flew to Fiji for three weeks, where I caught small boats to islands that took less than ten minutes to circumnavigate on foot. And it was there, where stars were the brightest that I have ever seen them that it clicked. This was why people loved travelling. I made friends with people who didn’t possess shoes or a concept of time, ate spam sandwiches and drank tongue numbing kava washed down by beer with jolly middle aged Fijian men. I snorkelled in transparent waters whilst miniature white-finned sharks circled me and wild, black horses saunter down deserted beaches. It was glorious. But then I ran out of money and it was time to go home. I left Fiji and made my way back to London via a few days in Bali.
Waiting for me when I arrived in Ubud, hidden under large tarpaulins in the middle of rice fields or besides thatched houses, were the ogoh-ogoh. These were the huge, sometimes over 15-foot-high, figures of spirits — red-eyed, hunch-backed, with long fingernails and jagged grimaces. They were being given the finishing touches for Nyepi Day, Balinese New year, which I had accidentally arrived on the island just in time for. On Nyepi Eve, these figures would be unwrapped and paraded through the streets of each community, followed by drums, firecrackers, shouting, clapping, all under the orange glow of a night full of firelight. Quite alone, I drifted into the heart of the town, into the thick of the crowds that snaked behind their ogoh-ogoh, carried by young people who were immaculately dressed in freshly ironed uniforms, some playing musical instruments, some tasked with the duty of carrying the village’s annual demons high on their shoulders before throwing them onto a huge pyre. That night, the fire would cleanse villages, towns and cities throughout Bali, propelling the collected demons higher and higher into the sky.
It was not my New Year’s Eve. But, it felt just as lonely as the most isolating, highly strung night in the Western World, where if you haven’t organised a night-out in a terrible club or aren’t getting blackout drunk at an ill-planned house party, then the forthcoming year is doomed. Balinese New Year was more wholesome but just as lonesome.
After three months already of being by myself, the celebrations of the New Year made me realise how painfully self-conscious of being so on-my-own I was. But then I realised — nobody, and I mean nobody, noticed that I was there at all. I walked around the town like a ghost, perhaps almost spirit like myself. I have a sad memory of this night, but looking back it was also freeing — it was my first New Year’s Eve alone and I made the very best of it! I welcomed the next day when the island wrapped itself in an enforced silence. Policemen lined the streets to stop people from leaving their houses — any noise, any at all might tempt demons who may still be circling above the village back down to earth. I welcomed the quiet, because, that way, I wouldn’t feel so bad for having no one to talk to. And, so, on my last day of my first ever solo-backpack, I found myself noiseless, holed up in a hotel room eating packets of dried instant noodles and Balinese snacks (there was no cooking allowed either, and I hadn’t had a chance to order food for the day). Home pulled at my sleeve hard as I thought about my time away. I recognised in myself a loneliness and a lack of confidence that other backpackers, the gap-yah kids, the modern-day explorers, had. Though I had loved parts of my trip, I had approached most of my experiences with caution and a tightly zipped backpack that was too heavy, never fully letting myself go entirely for fear of losing myself. In my room, as I hid from my own ogoh-ogoh, I accepted that, though others travelled to get lost, that I didn’t want to be lost! I wanted to go home! And to be with the people who I loved and felt comfortable with! And that was ok…
14 years later, however, it feels good to always find myself at home in myself, always in good company, even alone. I wonder what that 22 year old on her own in a hotel room, eating cassava chips and hiding from imaginary demons might think about that…
Happy New Year, everybody. Wishing you the opposite of lonesomeness for the next 12 months ahead!