Alone

I am alone.

Not lonely, just, alone.

     Sitting on the bed in my parent’s house – when did it become my parent’s and not mine? – with my mother away studying, my father out at work and me left here to mind the house, I am alone.

     Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes I don’t.  I enjoy the freedom to stand in the shower that’s turned up just a little too hot, for just a little too long, languishing in the heavy flow of the steaming water.  I enjoy my malleable time, where everything’s fine so long as it gets done by the end of the day and then whoops I forgot and I can always do it tomorrow.  I enjoy the fact that I’m in a semi-detached stronghold with the cannons of middle-class bourgeois self-importance peeking over the crenulations of my memories of this place, so that when a cold-caller calls claiming to be compensating for a car-accident, I can comfortably say with a smug smile that thank you for calling but my family doesn’t own a car and no, thank you, I think I would have known if such a calamity had come to pass.

     I don’t enjoy it when it gets dark.  When I find myself watching for movement out of the windows, from the corners of my eye.  I don’t enjoy it when there’s a silence, and then a sound, out of place, leading me to question where I am and what I’m doing.  I don’t like it when I’m caught not knowing what to do, when asking for help by phone or by email would seem like a beacon blasting out an admission of helplessness.

     All in all, I think, I can’t help but relish this.  But then, I have to stop, reconsider.  I’m not alone at all.  There’s a boy, miles and miles away who can’t help but smile whenever I kiss him, on the tip of his nose.  There’s a girl, who’s not quite so far, who confided in me recently, worries about another friend in a chain of hope and goodwill.  And there are friends that I will meet soon, who are coming for fun and larking about  but who I’m sure will hold me up when such things are farthest from  my mind.  I realise that I could write and write and write about  the  people – who I know, who I’ve met, who love me, who  hate me, and who haven’t quite decided yet, but it all boils down to this.

I’m not alone.  I’m surrounded.