A-LONE!

I tried to start this with a song title and the two that came to mind were either "Alone again or" or "Along again naturally". I didn't like the need for the word "again" as the second word of each of those, "again" just made it sound so despondent and that wasn't at all where I want to go here…but it did lend further thought to the discussion. Why does "alone" need to be quantified by "again"? Why can't someone just be "alone" and then "not alone"? What's the opposite of alone anyway? Is it coupled? That doesn't work because that means that you're either alone or with one other person. Alone would seem to lead to lonely and lonely just doesn't have a good vibe to it. But you don't have to be alone to be lonely and when you're alone you may very well be quite content and not the least bit lonely.

But I digress.

My best friend's daughter is heading off to college in a few days. My best friend has been dreaming about this moment for YEARS. She can't wait to not have to cook for anyone or clean up after anyone. She yearns to sit peacefully on her patio with the Sunday Times and a cup of coffee. These are the daydreams she's shared with me through all the years of getting up early on a Saturday to get to a soccer game or when she's stayed up too late making sure that all the kids hanging in her basement have safely made it their respective homes.

My BFF (we'll call her BFF) has been divorced for more than a decade. Her long-term significant other lives several hours away and although he's often with her he also travels frequently for business which means that she doesn't have him to worry about full-time.

Her older child mostly lives with his girlfriend now; although they are nearby they aren't there full-time so he's no longer a full-time member of the household.

That left just her daughter and now her daughter has to report to her college dorm by 8AM this coming Sunday morning and when BFF heads home that afternoon it will be to house empty of all humans (but still populated by a cat and large dog).

All of this suddenly occurred to her last night while we were out having dinner and sangria at our favorite local restaurant. Alone. She's going to be ALONE. Not long after she said this we both realized she had NEVER lived alone. NEVER. She lived with her parents until college, at college she had two roommates (both of whom she's still friends with), after college she got an apartment nearby with a friend, I was invited to go in with them but the other person was CRAZY and I opted to get my own little garden apartment. BFF went from a year or two of living the wild and crazy single life to being engaged and married. By the time her marriage was splitting up she had two kids so even after hubby was gone there were still those other two humans to reckon with.

WOW!

I've lived alone for long stretches of time twice as an adult and both times were wonderful. During my second turn at alone-ness I even bought my own little house. A cottage really, very small but cute as could be and quite comfy on a nice sized piece of property and all mine. I never thought of being alone as being an unnatural state of being. I never had a problem with it. I can remember at least two times when I had my little house and I was on my way home from a long day at work, I turned onto my street and as I approached my home I thought, "this is the HAPPIEST moment of my LIFE!" I could go in and not walk into anyone else's mess; no laundry on the floor, no dishes in the sink. The house would be just as I'd left it that morning. I could settle in at my coffee table with whatever I wanted to have for dinner; I could read a book and not have to wrestle for control of the TV, hell I could listen to the radio instead and not even turn on the TV.

Don't get me wrong. My current husband? Yeah, I'll keep him. One reason though is that we're both excellent at being alone. He "gets" that alone thing. He's been there himself. When we met we were each living alone (well, not really, we each had a dog); he in a one bedroom apartment and me in my little cottage. There were no roommates to deal with when we slept at each other's places it was just us. With no roommates in the mix we could bring our respective dog along for any sleepovers. We had privacy and time to get to know each other.

I mentioned this to A3 this morning (you know her, my current phone friend who doubles as an actual friend) and we started going through her family and realized that of anyone she's the only one who has spent any time alone and even her time on the A (as in alone) list doesn't really tally up to more than a few months.

So what to make of all this? Can we be alone? Do we want to be alone? For some weird reason I always thought that alone was a natural state of being and we had to adjust ourselves to be with other people but maybe the reverse is true, maybe coupled or grouped is natural and alone is completely unnatural. I doubt that pre-historic humans could have subsisted alone, they needed their community to hunt and gather and care for each other. As civilization progressed people lived in villages and towns, they had large families, they went from their family of origin home to their family of marriage home and started pro-creating. There were always people around. I'm sure no one EXPECTED to come home to an empty house or to things just as they'd left them that morning. It's me, isn't it?

We really AREN'T "alone again naturally".