Four More Hours On The Clock

People always ask me if I get lonely staying by all by myself and I always answer breezily that, no, not at all, on the contrary I like the silence but the house is a big pain to clean.

It is true. I do like the quiet and the peace of just being with myself, by myself. And part of why I like it is because it makes me feel independent; that I have the capability to take care of myself and that I don't need anyone. There's something about independence that attracts me. The strength and determination that it signifies and also in the small and dark part of my heart, the platform from which it allows me to look down at the Whiny and the Needy and scornfully declare myself to be remarkably different.

But as I look at the multitude of food in my fridge that has to be thrown away because I've been too busy to eat it and now, too sick to eat it, it brings on this curious bout of nostalgia and, dare I say it, loneliness. When you've been alone in a house all day and darkness falls, it brings with it a coldness that you don't notice when you're too tired from work, or when someone else is with you. Being sick and physically unable to do the necessary things, it makes you realize how frail and insignificant you are. All those notions about strength and determination, those are nothing when your own human frailities fail you.

There's nothing really wrong in admitting that you can't do everything and depending on other people. But when you realize that the people whom you depend on aren't really all that dependable, you quickly learn to depend on yourself. And in a curious chain of things, once it has been established that you can depend on yourself, people cease to offer themselves for you to depend on. So maybe it's not really a case of dependency, but more of availability and willingness.

Yours and Theirs.