Leave Me Alone
Leave Me Alone
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday March 29, 2014
When was the last time you spent 24 hours alone? An entire day and night without human company? For me, it’s been decades. I now find it faintly ridiculous I spent so much of my early life trying to avoid being by myself.
The idea of a Saturday night at home was once unthinkable. I couldn’t imagine aloneness being enjoyable. Twenty years later, a Saturday night-in is a relief. I’ve lost my appetite for nightlife. Somewhere between giving birth to my third child and waking up on the wrong side of 45, wild partying and seedy Sundays no longer appeal.
Many of my friends remain the most social of butterflies. On weekends, they invariably ring to see what excitement the bloke and I have planned for tonight. I consider a giant fib: “Oh! We’re out to dinner! Yes! Yes! Some place new!”
Instead I feign nonchalance: “Actually, nothing! – we’re staying home.” There is an uncomfortable pause. “Nothing? Are you okay? What’s happened?” (Happy homebodies have no social status.)
A friend reels off her guest-list for tonight’s dinner party. I feel envious of her enthusiasm but not of the 2am finish, the stockpile of dirty dishes or the dawn summons of three children demanding their breakfast.
Perhaps we’ve confused ‘alone’ with ‘lonely.’ We sympathise with people whose aloneness has been forced upon them: the solitude created by grief, or illness or lack of independence. But self-inflicted seclusion is not yet an acceptable form of selfishness – that’s for those we label ‘eccentrics’ or worse, ‘misfits.’ I’d like to think there are loners who are perfectly content.
My husband has always delighted in being a lone wolf. He’s one of seven children (born in nine years, which only intensified the congestion). For him, there is no greater joy than time spent alone. His idea of utopia is an entire weekend free to dig up the garden, absorb the newspapers and catch back-to-back footy games. Preferably all three undertaken in silence. I fear I’m disappointing company!
My first taste of solitude came, aged 27, after moving to Sydney for a new job. I landed in the middle of summer, but mistook it for winter: the oppressive battle-ship grey skies and constant drizzle, the air clammy with humidity. Home was a dank two-bedroom flat shared with a work colleague I barely knew. Homesickness came in waves on weekends. I found being alone disconcerting, even intimidating.
One Saturday morning, with my flat-mate away, I ate round after round of jam toast and allowed my mind to speculate on catastrophes. What if I choke on this crust? How long before someone finds me – my body propped against the kitchen cupboards, contorted with rigor mortis, surrounded by crumbs and sticky drips of apricot jam. Even my fantasies were pathetic.
I decided if I must endure a weekend alone, I’d leave my death to fate and mingle with strangers instead. I walked from Neutral Bay, across the Harbour Bridge, marvelling at the giant scale of my new city.
I sat idling in cafes, the outsider, studying the myriad faces of the city’s inhabitants, inventing histories to go with the snippets of conversations that drifted past me on the footpath. My solitude began to feel good.
That night, I took myself to a movie. I chose Apollo 13, hoping for a happy ending. I stood self-consciously in the line, hemmed in by hand-holding couples and old friends swapping new gossip. “How many?” said the usher, as I shuffled towards the stalls. “Just the one” I said. He shone his torch down the aisle. “There’s a single seat on the end of Row G,” he said, spotlighting the one solo seat amid a dim sea of heads. Two matrons on a big night out swivelled in tandem to check out the singleton about to flop down beside them. “We’ll keep you company!” one said, and offered me a Fantail. I was touched.
Today, I reign ineffectively over three exuberant, exhausting children. On those afternoons when their pre-dinner tantrums threaten a brain snap (mine, not theirs) I fantasise about running away from home. Yesterday, mustering my herd for school, my teenage son lit my fuse by refusing to take a shower: “Geez Mum” he shouted. “I smell fine! Calm your farm!” I would have, but I was already tussling with his little sister, who was shrieking her objections to hair brushing.
I’ve made my goal this year to seek more solitude. On kindy mornings, I will despatch all three children to school, ignore the dishes and lie deep-breathing in the sanctuary of our unmade bed. I will revel in the brief stillness of my empty house and feel liberated.
That’s the kind of loner I want to be.