Alone Together
I get terribly lonely after two days of being home alone. There is only so much of my own company I can handle at once. There is only some much cleaning to be done in a 700-square-foot flat. There are only so many times one can text one's sister (even if there are three of them to choose from). There are only so many times one can check in on one's ailing grandmother. There are only so many walks one can walk; so many errands to run. There is only so much reading a fictional-illiterate like myself can tolerate; and I have read enough non-fiction in the last few days to fill a set of encyclopedias.
I opened the front door that faces the park and the tennis courts across the street so I can at least hear the conversations of the two shirtless thirty-something-year-old men trying humorously to cling to the last days of summer. It is an overcast 18°; it has been raining for days. I suppose I can't judge them too harshly; I am the one with the front door wide open, heating up the whole neighbourhood. I am the one so desperate for human contact that I will conciliatorily accept overhearing the conversations of others when I cannot acquire a conversation of my own to be a part of.
Sometimes when days like this hit me, when the Intern is off at work and I have done all the things I can think to do (even... gasp...exercising!), I trudge my quiet self to a coffee shop or haberdashery in hopes of finding a friendly stranger to engage with. At the very least, in a coffe shop, all of customers are alone together.
Today I am tethered to the house waiting for deliveries which, I am beginning to believe, will never materialize.
In my family of origin the only kind of solitude I knew was being "alone together." There were just so damn many of us in that house. Everywhere you turned there was a person. And instead of fighting the constant reality of people in my space when I needed a break, I just grew to enjoy being alone together. The Intern (and these ramblings) will attest, I even grew to expect it.
Now that I am grown and in my very own house, creating what will one day be someone else's family of origin, in this moment, there's just about nothing I wouldn't do for a chance to be alone together.
I opened the front door that faces the park and the tennis courts across the street so I can at least hear the conversations of the two shirtless thirty-something-year-old men trying humorously to cling to the last days of summer. It is an overcast 18°; it has been raining for days. I suppose I can't judge them too harshly; I am the one with the front door wide open, heating up the whole neighbourhood. I am the one so desperate for human contact that I will conciliatorily accept overhearing the conversations of others when I cannot acquire a conversation of my own to be a part of.
Sometimes when days like this hit me, when the Intern is off at work and I have done all the things I can think to do (even... gasp...exercising!), I trudge my quiet self to a coffee shop or haberdashery in hopes of finding a friendly stranger to engage with. At the very least, in a coffe shop, all of customers are alone together.
Today I am tethered to the house waiting for deliveries which, I am beginning to believe, will never materialize.
In my family of origin the only kind of solitude I knew was being "alone together." There were just so damn many of us in that house. Everywhere you turned there was a person. And instead of fighting the constant reality of people in my space when I needed a break, I just grew to enjoy being alone together. The Intern (and these ramblings) will attest, I even grew to expect it.
Now that I am grown and in my very own house, creating what will one day be someone else's family of origin, in this moment, there's just about nothing I wouldn't do for a chance to be alone together.
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