Living Alone

I live alone.

This is how I have lived for a very long time.  For the entirety of my time in Ukraine, which started with my first apartment in September 2007 and has been nearly continuous (no lengthy stays in the U.S.) since May of 2008, I have lived alone in a modest, two-room apartment. 

Before that I lived alone for three years in a cabin in the Colorado mountains, where I could not see my nearest neighbors’ homes and where my most frequent visitors were deer, elk, raccoons, foxes and an occasional bear.  And before that I lived alone in a house that was much too big for one person in the south Denver suburbs for four and a half years.  There I had neighbors so close we could almost peer into each other’s windows, and my most frequent visitors were solicitors.

And even before that, I lived mostly alone or with one or two roommates for longer than I care to admit.  Living with a roommate or two is not exactly the same as living alone, of course, but it is also not at all the same as living in a relationship or marriage.  Even with a roommate, you can have a lot of aloneness.  Although you do have someone to talk with or do things with occasionally, you pretty much live your own lives and do your own things.  You give as much privacy to the other and keep as much to yourself as possible.

For many of us, at various stages of life, the idea of living alone sounds great.  This is especially true in our late teen years when we are dreadfully tired of living according to the rules and regulations of a family.  You can do what you want and not have to answer to anyone else.  You can go where you want, stay out as long as you want, make as much of a mess as you want, be as stupid as you want... it's great.  

If you want to use the bathroom with the door open, it's never a problem.  And no one uses your stuff or messes with the arrangement of your bathroom supplies.  You can make all the disgusting noises you want and never think twice about it. 

You can have privacy and quiet.  There is no one to stick his or her nose in your business, take offense that you didn’t clean up immediately after you made pancakes (three days earlier), or yell at you to pick up your room.  No one criticizes you for your choices of TV programs or for eating whipped cream straight out of the can… on the sofa… in your underwear.

If you want to play loud music, you can do it (unless you are in a flimsy Krushchevko-style apartment).  And if you want quiet so that you can concentrate or sleep, you don’t have to worry about anyone else interrupting your peace (unless you live in a flimsy Krushchevko-style apartment.

Yeah, it’s a great way to live!  Right?

Well, I wouldn’t recommend it… at least not for any long periods of time.  It can breed bad habits.

I have noticed certain things I do that I don’t think I’d be doing if I had a bunkie here with me.  For example, I talk to myself a lot more often than I used to.  I have some great conversations with myself sometimes, but those conversations often devolve into bitter arguments, which I always lose.

It used to concern me that I talked too much with my cats, when I had cats.  This was especially true in my mountain house when Tia the Attack Cat lived with me.  When she wasn’t outside terrorizing the local deer population (it was my dream, not hers), we used to converse a lot. 

I would try to talk about philosophy, spirituality, why she wasn't bringing home any fresh deer meat, or why I was living alone with a cat.  She, on the other hand, would just respond by yawning, standing by her food dish, or meowing to go back outdoors to terrorize the local rabbit and chipmunk populations (some of which she DID bring home).

So, it was a lot like talking to myself.  Now it’s sort of the same, but I don’t have buy cat food or clean smelly litter boxes.  So I guess it’s an improvement.

Talking to yourself is just one concern; there are others.

When you live by yourself, you don’t change your bed sheets as often as you probably should, you use the same shower towel for too long, and you don’t keep the place as clean as you would if there was at least one other person around.  Contrary to some popular beliefs, those are NOT good things.  

I am fortunate that I have students here almost every morning.  That forces me to keep the place picked up, looking good, and not smelling like a New York City dumpster.  To this extent, at least, I have retained some good habits.

And living alone is not conducive to maintaining personal discipline.  When you are responsible to and for no one but yourself, it's easy to be, well, irresponsible.  Not only does having another person around give you that extra voice of conscience (even if it sometimes seems like nagging), but if it is someone you care about - or love - it gives you extra motivation to do and be better.  Sometimes we really need that kind of motivation to reach our higher potentials.

But the worst thing about living alone is that you spend most of your time alone.  And this is not good for the soul.  The soul needs companionship: the warmth of a smile, the pleasure of long and sometimes intimate conversations, the joy of playing tricks on each other and laughing about it, the challenge of disagreeing and occasionally arguing without fighting or hurting each other, and that special, secure feeling of holding someone close or being held.

There is a quote I ran across once that went something like, “A life shared is a life well-lived.”  That always struck me as very true.  And at the same time, it struck me as a little sad because it suggested that my own life has not been particularly well-lived.

My most joyous moments have been the ones I’ve been able to share with others: thoughts, feelings, experiences, and especially love.  But those have come in short, fleeting moments lost in an enormous ocean of aloneness.  The sharing should have been the ocean and the aloneness the short, fleeting moments, but it hasn’t worked out that way.   

Why?  I really don’t know.  Maybe it was being too caught up in work and travel for too long.  Maybe it was not being grounded long enough to "build" something lasting.  After the terrible pain of some things that didn't work out, maybe it was fear.  Maybe I was waiting for something that never happened or perhaps didn't even exist.  The "why" doesn't really matter.

Aloneness is not a good thing.  For all the benefits you might think you can gain from this ultimate independence, you really gain nothing.  Years rush by in the blink of an eye, and you wake up one day shocked by the realization that you've seen many more years pass by than you have yet to come.  And it is not pleasant to realize that you've lived most of those years in a most empty and unsatisfying way.  I would not wish that on my worst enemy.

I still hold out some hope that I might enjoy a few years living well a shared life, but time is growing shorter, and prospects are dim.  Perhaps, sometimes, certain things are just meant to be.