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.
