Solitude

Cold, rainy (low 30s)

During the fall, I can’t tell you how many times I thought, I can’t wait to eat by myself! I can’t wait to think, and write, and knit, and decide how I spend my time. And now that time is here. I ate three meals by myself today. I’ve thought a lot. I’m writing at this very moment. I knitted earlier, and I decided how to spend my time from 5:00 this afternoon until now, 9:00 at night. And it’s lovely, truly lovely, to have that freedom, to know that if I wanted to right now, I could drive home, or I could go to sleep, or I could knit another row, or I could call a friend. But there’s another side to solitude, and that’s loneliness. “Solitude” sounds all noble, as if the person experiencing it is doing something important, something stoic and good. “Solitary” is the word you would use to describe all the important hermits of history. Would you describe Thoreau, or John Muir, or any of those crazy Catholic saints, as “lonely?” Surely not.

But right now, looking out into the the black night, the line between the two seems kind of thin. I love these moments to myself, when I can sit by the fire and do whatever I want, without inane conversation, without anything to compete for my attention. But I also hoped that Marc, because he has a car at the moment, would come out to visit, and he’s not going to. Getting him to come out here at all is this big, stupid issue, because he can’t understand what it’s like to want so badly to be here, but to not want to be here alone. If I didn’t want to be here alone, why did I take the job? I clearly do; most nights I don’t feel so restless, and the quiet doesn’t seem difficult. But then there are times when I want company, and I want it so badly that I get irrational and angry, and the solitude (of which I am proud) turns very clearly into loneliness.

Someone told me yesterday that Rilke said something along the lines of, “The times when you don’t want solitude are the times when you need it the most.” I just looked it up, and the actual passage is:

"There is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworthy. . . . But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows..."

And everyone who’s being honest about loneliness knows that. I can’t get out of my mind something that one of the wilderness therapy kids said last winter, which was in reference to the week they had spent totally alone in a little tent in the wilderness, without speaking or communicating in any way. What he said was, “It was really hard. It totally sucked at first. But what I learned was, if you can’t like yourself, why should anyone else like you?”

This was probably an idea they pursued a lot in their group, but it stuck with me. We all have those friends who hate to be alone for any reason, who seem so afraid of themselves that they wouldn’t dream of spending Friday night alone in a cabin in the woods. And that seems silly. Although I plan to always have people around me in my life, I know there’s only one who’s going to be there the whole time, and that’s me. So really, the only thing you can count on, from your birth to your death, is your own existence. The only company you’re going to have that whole time is yourself. It scares me to think that it’s possible to not be comfortable with that.

And then there’s right now. I’ve eaten half a box of imitation Cheez-its and I’m drinking tea, glancing up at the little fire in my fireplace, and it’s a beautiful moment, really. It’s supposed to snow here tonight, or maybe tomorrow, and there’s a chance I’ll end up stuck here. I’m not going to pretend that I’m excited at the prospect; I rather fancy going home to check my email and sleep soundly, but I suppose this is what I have right now, and it is what it is: The only company I can fully count on. Whew. In a weird way, that makes me feel better.