Solo

So 90% of the time, I feel perfectly fine, happy and content with being single, with having no significant other in my life. Yet it is that other 10%, that threatens to turn my world upside down. It’s the time in the early evening, when I get home from work, feeling like I want to unload a burden, or vent, or just summarize the days events out loud to somebody, and nobody is there. I guess using flatmates as a convenient sounding board has always been what worked for me. But at the moment she is in a serious relationship, and super busy at work on top of that, we pass like ships in the night on a regular basis. Tonight I got home from a nice musical evening to a quiet house, no lights on, no tv blaring, no music playing and sat on the couch with my herbal tea and it all hit me at once. The solitude. The quiet. The aloneness. Not even birds chirping or feral cats squabbling outside to distract me from the humm of the refrigerator and the otherwise complete loneliness of my evening. I feel as though each time I develop a great travelling friendship with someone, where we hang out all the time and go on weekend road trips, and generally have a blast, they are always gradually swallowed up by that large monster known as dating, courtship and marriage. Would I like to be swallowed up by such a monster? Hard to say, having heard so many horror stories about becoming so engaged to members of the opposite sex. My last two solo girl mates are currently in somewhat serious dating relationships, and although I am very happy for both of them, I find it hard to be happy for me. Some people love and crave solitude, I only like it during the day, then I can get things done. But when you don’t even have a fat cat nudging your ankles to distract you from the silence, from what currently feels like an empty existence, the internal tears come crashing down, making me want to wallow in depression, and eat ice cream. Tomorrow the sun will rise, and all will feel perfectly right with the world, and I will embrace the day with a light heart. But for tonight, this is how I feel – as though everyone else is venturing off to far distant shores, and I am here, by myself, the last one, alone.