Being Alone

I’ve had some medical problems the last few weeks and I found myself in the bathroom a couple nights ago, wondering what I would do if I needed to go to the hospital. This isn’t the first time this has happened since the divorce, but it was the first time that I felt confident about my answer to myself. In previous iterations, I truly felt like I didn’t deserve any help and so I would just die on my bathroom floor. That didn’t happen this time. Not the dying or the thinking that was what I deserved. This means I’m making progress, I think.

For so much of my married life, I imagined spending our golden years together, doing church service. But then things got—bad. In the last year of the marriage, I was struck with terror at the thought of being alone as an old woman. Who would take me to the doctor? Who would help me with my financial accounts? Who would ensure I had health insurance? Who would I enjoy spending time with, sitting on the couch with Netflix open, or on a walk around the park?

The answers to these questions seem at this point to be: me. I will be the one who takes care of my needs. I will be the one who either drives myself to the hospital or who calls someone close by who can do that for me. I will be the one who manages my finances. I will be the one who goes with me on a walk in the park. If that seems sad to you, well, it doesn’t to me. Not anymore, anyway. It seems, well, restful.

I find that I am not unhappy about being alone these days. I like being alone, most of the time. I get lonely rarely, but I have a very busy life. I’m not retirement age yet, but I see clearly now that I have always been a busy, active person and I probably will be for a long time. I will always have projects I’m working on. I hope that when I die, I’ve just started a big afghan and have sketched out the plans for it. Kids, if you read this in the future, just remember I want you to bury me with that afghan. Don’t try to get someone else to finish it. It’s MINE!

Sometimes I wonder who it was who told me I needed to be so afraid of being alone. My parents? The church? My ex? Or was it the me who spent so much of her life as a SAHM? Did I find it hard to imagine that I would be living my best life now?

It’s not that I don’t like spending time with other people. I just like to be fully in charge of when and with whom I do that. I am so much looking forward to a lot of alone time in the rest of my life. I didn’t get enough of it for so many years, and now I can sink into it. Will I get drunk on it? If so, I will do it again. And again.