Autobiography · Relationships

Alone

Ruby Pipes

I tell Andrew it was a lonely day. Not the kind of loneliness that comes with not being around people, with your phone not ringing. The kind that sits down in your bones and reminds you that no one will notice if you don’t come home. The kind I’d managed to avoid for most of my life. Either with partners who had keys to our front door, or a family that shared meals, or glasses of Jim Beam and Newport cigarettes. I filled that empty space. It did not surface, did not hold sway. It did not catch me standing in my kitchen like it did yesterday.

But there is a certain beauty to it. Finally realizing that everything I do is for my own best interest. That I finally get to be honest about who I am, about what I like, about my passions. It is a grand unearthing disguised as simplicity. I ask for help from Nadine to make a shopping list. “What do I like to eat?” I’ve forgotten how to conduct life for just me. Not sure if I ever knew exactly how to begin with. Always hid it from myself under a layer of trips to the bar and wrapping my arms around strangers. Now it’s just me. Alone. I attack the life in front of me, I sink in my teeth.

Start running again. Find a gym I can lift in for the first time in close to ten months. I take my list to the grocery store and buy food that is nourishing and makes me happy. I cook dinner for myself and share it only when I want to. In the morning I sit at the kitchen table and drink a cup of coffee in solitude. I make conscious decisions about everything I do and think hard about whether or not it benefits me. What is the underlying goal here? Are you doing this because you want someone to think or feel something specific about you or do you want to, like to, need to do this? I answer the questions I never even thought to ask before. I answer the questions I once relied on other people to answer for me.

My friends, my family, my partner. They back me. Stand in my corner and make sure I continue to face the right direction. That I don’t quit. That I keep my eyes open for signs of slipping. They keep me honest. Push me when I need pushing and don’t accept answers like, “I’m fine.” But they never do it for me. Never even offer. I hold space for them in my life, but it is not at my own expense anymore. I make room for them, but I do not push out my own loves and needs and wants to do it. I do not compromise myself. I do not buckle when I feel like maybe someone is asking me to.

In the grocery store I stand in the liquor aisle wondering if I’m going to make it to year three of my sobriety. Wondering if the vastness of living my own life will leave me raw and searching for crutches. I clutch tight to my necklace that’s engraved with my date–12.29.13–and shake the feeling off again. I am not the same person who didn’t know how to face this. I am not the woman who was afraid of the pieces that make her.

Photo courtesy of Artem Verbo.

20 thoughts on “Alone”

  7. I understand the feeling. Once, I was alone in San Francisco. Limply I sat down on the curb of the street, flattened by the depression of my early 20’s. How could a city be swarming with people, yet be so isolating, so impenetrable? Then I felt a love surround me. It was as simple and strange and comforting as that, just being held by something large and gentle. My anxiety ebbed away, and I felt I belonged to this love, whatever it was, and that I had reason to remain here in life. I didn’t feel so alone.

    I still get waves of aching aloneness. It is written into the mechanics of the 21st century. But I can remember that moment know. I haven’t forgotten.

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  10. Aug 9 was a day after my birthday and let me tell you that I was feeling the exact same way. In many different ways but I can still compare myself to the mutual feelings that we feel as humans walking the earth. It’s not pleasant at times when life isn’t being directed or going the way we would like it to lead to but one day we will look back and realize that it was not even a big deal after all. It’s just at the moment when it feels like everything is a fail and you can feel your soul enjoying the moment. Moments like that are forgetful and soon fade away as a memory.

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