All by myself
As I write this, my husband is on his way to Muncie (no, he does not have a timeshare there) for a historic preservation conference. It’s midafternoon Tuesday and he’ll be back mid-day on Friday. I. Am. Giddy.
This might come as a shock if you read Monday’s newsletter, celebrating our anniversary and listing all the things that make our marriage amazing. Let me add that there were many, many things I left off the list, things that I take for granted and so didn’t bother to include. My husband who didn’t even like cats at the beginning of our marriage is now the cleaner of the litter box. He does pretty much all the cleaning. Takes care of the finances. Washes most of the dishes. He cooks. Takes out the trash.
The list is long and I didn’t include it on Monday because it just seems insulting to brag on all the things a husband does instead of treating them as things that anyone in a co-habiting relationship should do. Men shouldn’t be gushed over just for being decent roommates and co-parents.
The point is, we have a very happy marriage, so you might be wondering why I’m giddy that he’s leaving. If you’re married or in a long-term relationship yourself, you’re probably not wondering this at all. Loving someone very much and being glad when they get the fuck out of the house are not contradictory feelings.
My husband and I live a life characterized by an above-average amount of togetherness.
We work at the same college. We both have a Monday-Wednesday-Friday teaching schedule. There have been semesters when our teaching schedules were almost exactly aligned, meaning we were always home together. We have the same group of friends. Even when we’re doing separate things, in our small town there’s a chance we’ll still run into each other.
In other words, we are rarely out of each others’ presence long enough to actually miss each other and I think missing each other every now and then is good for a relationship.
What wild and rambunctious things will I do while my husband is gone? Well, I just ate a fake bacon BLT sandwich for lunch. Then I’ll probably go read for a bit in the backyard. I’m planning my first trip to the new T.J. Maxx in town, about the most exciting thing to happen in Madison since the courthouse cupola caught on fire. Sure, I’ll probably do a little witchcraft—a spell to put my last writing project behind me and move on. But it’s not like that’s a secret. I told him exactly what I was going to do before he left.
“Don’t catch anything on fire,” he said.
There’s also a small chance I’ll eat a whole bag of Cheetos for dinner one night. And stay up late in bed or on the couch reading. If I’m very rebellious, I might sleep with our bedroom door open and let the cats climb in bed with me. This is fraught because anyone who has cats know that once you let them into a space, it’s very hard to get them back out.
At the moment, I’m giddy and that will probably last through tomorrow. By Thursday, I’ll be ready for him to come home. By Friday I’ll be giddy again, but this time to see him and hear all the stories he’ll have to tell (anything could happen in Muncie with a bunch of wild and crazy preservationists).
It’s only three and a half days, really, but maybe in that space, I’ll remember the past version of myself who used to live alone. I spent almost ten years of my life living solo, which used to seem very long and now feels fairly short. When I was young, I didn’t dream of a husband and a family and a house in the suburb. I dreamed of living alone, oddly enough, in an apartment above a bar.
I sometimes think my natural state is to live alone, but here’s the thing—I have no idea anymore what that was like.
I can picture the houses and the apartments I lived in. I can remember the view out the window—watching people playing pick-up basketball in the park in Birmingham. I know what jobs I was working and I can even recall what I watched on TV (in Birmingham, Turner Classic Movies and Titans football games; in Indiana, many, many episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
When I lived in the four bedroom house on campus, I was doing Weight Watchers (I know, but I was younger and still slave to diet culture) and I remember printing out their recipes to cook for myself, eating the leftovers for days. In my apartment in Birmingham, I cut my thumb open making guacamole for one to watch with a Titans’ games. It bled and bled and I called my mother to ask if I should go to the emergency room or not.
I was still by myself in the Hanover house when I got back from a trip to India with some strange bodily affliction, so I have vivid memories of lying in my bed, alone, staring at the ceiling and thinking that there was no one there to find me in the morning if I died of some mysterious disease. Maybe this says a lot about me but this is one of the biggest bonuses of cohabitation for me—knowing that if I’m freaked out in the middle of the night, at least I’m not freaked out and alone.
I want to believe that I enjoyed living alone, but there’s not enough substance to my memories to know for sure. How did I fill the time that wasn’t cooking or mowing that hellscape of a lawn at the campus house? Did I play music to fill up the quiet? Was there more space in my head in an empty house? Did I feel lonely? That version of me feels so far away as to be another person altogether. Maybe she was.
And what did it matter one way or the other whether I liked living alone? It was just what I had to do.
I was well over having roommates and never desperate enough to be with someone just for the sake of not being alone. Which probably tells me all I need to know about that past version of myself.
I do know that by the time I started dating my husband, I was content with being alone. Whether it was true or not, I had convinced myself I could do it forever if I needed to. I mean, it wasn’t an apartment above a bar, but I had a job and friends and the beginnings of a community and a cat. I would be okay.
My husband’s on his way to Muncie and I am giddy, but also a little uneasy. I spend a lot of time in my current life alone in my writing room. But more frequently than I’d like to admit (and probably more frequently than my husband finds ideal) I get lonely or bored or anxious or sad. Then I walk downstairs to the back room of the house, which is my husband’s “office” (actually, baseball card space). He’s almost always there or in the kitchen or the backyard. I pretend to have something to tell him or sometimes I don’t bother. I ask for a hug. I set eyes on another human being. I don’t remember what it’s like to live without that anymore.
I don’t remember what it was like living without the constant companion of a smart phone. What did I do with all my time? I don’t remember the world before the internet or computers that did much more than play really clunky video games. I don’t remember how I spent all my spare time before I started writing again. Did I watch more TV? There are so many past versions of myself that are lost to me, lined up like ghosts following me around, hovering behind me even as I type.
If you’re leaning into witchy season (which is an annual thing for me) check out this post from last year:
Or this note about Baba Yaga and generational trauma.
I recognized myself and my life in this, Robyn. My husband and I have worked and lived together for our entire relationship. Interesting things began to happen when the traveling slowed down and neither of us had our "alone time" in the house. He could care less about it. I crave it. But I also feel unsettled.
There is something about being alone in one's own house that both restores and shakes up my sense of self -- yes, there are the past selves that materialize but there is more. I feel as if I've lost some muscles I used to exercise when I was on my own and I think about that a lot as I face the future when one of us will almost certainly leave the other behind for a much longer period than three days.
I so resonated with this post--except I literally never lived alone in my life until covid hit (as I turned 70) and my husband went to help out our daughter and grandkids for 5 months. And I was indeed briefly giddy, watched way too much HGTV, but really enjoyed our long daily phone calls.
But must of my adult life (started living with my husband at age 19), my husband and I were on academic schedules (studying or working) which meant we usually had 3-4 days when we were both at home. And this meant the only alone time before our daughter left home for me was a convention. where I often went to few panels and spent most of the 2-3 days up in my room, gloriously alone. After our daughter left home, (and i was no longer going to conventions) alone time was when my husband traveled for work, and my experience was the duplicate of yours. Giddy, eating and watching tv that I might not do if there was a witness! and then missing him and looking forward to his return. Now going on 10 years when we are both retired, and especially since Covid, and our traveling days being over, we are together 24-7, 7 days a week, except when one of us is out walking (which we don't do together.) That is why that 5 months he was gone was important to me. First, it made me confident I could live alone if I was widowed--something as you age you worry about, although it is much more likely that I will die before my husband. Second, It also reminded me that I really don't prefer living alone but was anxious for my husband to come back. Third, I also learn a little about what ways I had compromised because of living with someone for over 50 years by what I did differently when I didn't have another person to think about. Turns out, not much, but I did move certain things in the kitchen to make it easier to reach them...and bravely insisted that we keep that arrangement when he returned (smile.) Again, thanks for the fun, thoughtful post, certainly sent me down memory lane as well.