Do Most People Know How It is For Some Living Alone
I’ve been living alone for the past thirty years and most of the ten years prior to that. As I age and slow down, I have been struck by how truly inefficient it is to live alone. I have to cook every meal. I have to make every trip to the grocery store. I have to be the one who picks up the dry cleaning, walks the dog, paints the house, vacuums, washes the dishes, tends the garden. EVERY DAY. I can never say, “Will you pick up eggs and bread on your way home?” I can never say, “I’ve got a deadline and I told Millie I’d feed her cat while she’s gone. Can you do that for me today and tomorrow?” And on and on. But there was one unanticipated REALLY BIG THING that confronted me during that first year of living alone.
The level of emotional abuse in my sixteen-year marriage had built slowly, interspersed with short romantic interludes. Then one day I realized it had been five years since that last romantic respite, the abuse was more frequent, more overt , , , and there was a new development: my husband was making a crude attempt at gaslighting me. Leaving out the details of the drama that followed (an attempt at marriage counseling, a revelation about his hidden life, etc.), one day I read a statement that spoke to me (shouted, actually): Sometimes you have to make the decision between being lonely and being crazy. Not immediately, but eventually, I chose divorce and lonely.
That first year was really tough. Going weeks, months without being touched. Getting accustomed to the reduced financial circumstances. (I had a proud divorce. Here, you take the money!) I had married young. I had never in my life lived alone. Then came that unanticipated REALLY BIG THING: there were days when I felt both lonely AND crazy. The book hadn’t mentioned that as a possibility!
Four engagements, no marriages. A growing appreciation for solitude. Fast forward forty years. I do not regret my decisions. I treasure my autonomy. But I do not tout it as the only way to live. I have seen several instances of people in their sixties and seventies happily finding a life partner after years of happily living alone.
Life’s an adventure and then you die.
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