I’m bat shit terrified of being alone. That’s a huge part of why I ended up with Norman. He had people. So many people. He had all these friends who were always coming over just to hang out and talk and watch football or whatever. It made me feel safe.
In the dark years, the ones where I lived alone in that gross efficiency and had no one and nothing and just living through each day was a challenge, I used to play a game where I would try to calculate how long it would take for someone to find my body if I died. Each night I would go through what I had scheduled the next day, which job I would be working at (because in those days there was always at least two jobs, often three) and who I would be working with and whether those people were the kind of people who would notice and care when I didn’t show up. It was a horrible game. The realization that if you just stopped showing up, no one would care. No one would come looking for you. No one would call the cops until your body started to smell.
That’s where I am again in life. My coworkers would be pissed if I stopped coming in, but they wouldn’t do anything about it. And there’s no one else I talk to on a regular basis. It’s totally normal for me to go weeks without speaking to my friends. No one would notice if I died until my body started to smell. It’s absolutely terrifying, just like it was back then.

I didn’t worry about this when I was in law school, even though I lived alone then. I think law school was the healthiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I had enough, albeit mostly from student loans. I had people that I talked to every day. I only saw Norman on the weekends, so it was easy not to notice the things that, in hindsight, should have been glaring red flags. I wish I could go back to law school and make different choices.
It’s no mystery that my desire to return to grad school is me seeking to return to my “salad days.” That’s Shakespeare, you know. From Julius Caesar, I think. It refers to the carefree innocence of youth. I was never innocent, or carefree, but law school was the closest I came to those things.
I feel safe in school. Which is a funny thing to say these days, when it seems like every day another school is being shot up by angry, hurting people who have failed to find any other way to fit in or express themselves in this toxic society in which we are all trapped. In school I don’t have to hide in the bathroom and cry for a few minutes before plastering on a fake smile for the customers.

There’s lots of crying and angry outbursts and emotional eating associated with being a lawyer. It’s pretty much normal for that occupation. Which is why I hated it, and why I never want to go back.
I don’t like being alone. This is seen as a character flaw in our society, where people brag about being a “lone wolf” and independence is valued beyond all else. Okay, maybe not all else. Money definitely tops the charts in the good old U S of A. But you’re also expected to make that money all on your own, with no help from anyone. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Don’t rely on society or anyone else to help you get by. Such a funny message for a country founded on the premise that unity makes you stronger.
I don’t like being alone. I like doing solitary activities, like reading and writing and jigsaw puzzles. Although arguably jigsaw puzzles could be something you do with someone else. I’ve just never met anyone who wants to do them with me. Maybe that should be what I look for when I’m ready to start dating again. A man who will do a jigsaw puzzle with me.
The good thing about Norman was that he didn’t demand my attention, just my presence. He wanted to know what I was doing every moment of every day, but he didn’t want to participate in what I was doing. So I was free to do my solitary activities while he slept and played video games all day. I was mentally alone but not physically alone. It comforted me, when he wasn’t making me miserable. I don’t think I ever really liked him very much. I just liked having someone in the same house as me.
I need a roommate. Right now I’m renting a room in a share house for people with low income and shit credit, but it isn’t the same as having a roommate. We all sequester ourselves in our individual rooms and just nod awkwardly when our paths collide in shared spaces. I need a REAL roommate. A friend. Someone to talk to and watch movies with and tell about my day when I get home.
I hate this idea that if you aren’t in a romantic relationship you should live alone. I want a Friends type situation. A Big Bang Theory kind of scenario. I want someone to be around to notice if I don’t get out of bed one morning and to find my body before it starts to stink. I’m really not sure why our society thinks that is such a bad thing.
But I have neither roommate nor romantic partner. I am alone, and it sucks. Lone wolves are miserable, by the way. Wolves, like people, are pack animals. When a wolf has to leave their pack and find another, they are sad and scared and sometimes it kills them.

That’s a big part of why I do this blog. When I am alone and lonely and scared I can sit down and type up my thoughts and feelings and release them into the void that is the internet and sometimes people read them and relate to them and reach out and tell me so. And for a few moments, I feel a true connection.
For a few moments, we are alone together.
It’s not a feeling that is unique to me. Pretty much every band I love has written about it. That’s probably why I love them. They understand.
I desperately need a pack, but I am not a good judge of character. I have this thing where I see the good in people to the exclusion of all their bad traits. And I mean ALL people. It’s what made me such a good public defender. It’s why I was so amazing at mitigation. I could find the good in almost anyone. I joke sometimes that if you ever find yourself alone in a room with one of the very few people I flatly characterize as “bad” you should run for your life. But it’s actually pretty much true. Except for that one white collar criminal. He wasn’t really dangerous, he was just such an extraordinary ASSHOLE.
My friend Bitsy despairs of my total lack of judgment when it comes to other people. You should see the faces she makes when I describe a career drug dealer as “a good guy, really.” And to be fair, my inability to see the bad in people has put me in some not great positions. Norman, for example. Short of actually killing a person, it really doesn’t get much worse than abandoning your girlfriend without a car or money in the path of a category five hurricane. And yet I married him and gave him nearly two decades of my life and I’m still constantly shocked by how mean he is to me sometimes.
So I do not have a roommate. I have absolutely no idea how to find one, or how to pick a good one. I am alone, and oftentimes that makes my anxiety unbearable. But the writing helps. The “talking” to the faceless masses on the internet, those who know me and those who just stumbled across whatever nonsense I wrote that day and thought “hey, this person is like me. I am not alone in the world.” And sometimes they find me on social media and tell me so and that is lovely because then I am not alone in the world either.

Soon it will be Beltane. The one-year anniversary of when I left my husband the first time. It’s been an agonizingly hard year, full of bad decisions and pain and fear. But I’ve finally found reliable healthcare, and sufficient income to keep a roof over my own head. Virginia Woolf said a woman needs a room of her own and a comfortable income in order to be able to write. I have those things now. I am ready to write.
Now I just have to find some readers. I know they’re out there, in the vast void that is the internet.
Deep in my heart, I know I am not alone in the world.
Lonely No More
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