I used to call it freedom. When Charles Bukowski posed the question, “When nobody wakes you up in the morning, and nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?” I would have said in a trying-to-not-be-cocky-teenager voice, “That sounds like freedom to me.”
Sometimes I’m a pessimist who pairs up with actual pessimists and realizes she’s actually realist. While walking out of the Graceland hotel, I had someone tell me that getting married was one of the worst ideas they had in their life. I laughed at the time, going along with what this person was saying and adding my own statement of, “Yeah, I don’t think I really want someone to tie me down for my entire life.” And while this is still true, I also don’t quite mean what I said. I think of some of my friends I had growing up who are married and have been married for years now. They have kids, even, and as far as I know, still love each other. When they got married, they ceased being fun. They didn’t want to hang out much anymore, and if they did manage to drag themselves out of their houses, their husband had to come along with them. However, this was much like ordering a steak, being told the restaurant is all out of steaks, but “here’s two chicken breasts instead!” It’s still great, it’s still fun, but it’s not what you wanted. It’s not what you’d intended on sticking with.
I’ve always appreciated the friends who made efforts to keep our friendship close, even with the new addition to their family. There’s a way to do this, and some of my friends have mastered it. Some of my friends I haven’t spoken to in years because they’re much too busy for me. And that’s okay, but I appreciate the others a little more.
This was a simple and repeated equation in my life. Woman+woman=two friends who hang out. Woman-woman+man=woman who can only hang out with other woman if man is toted along. One friend in particular would bring her brother along on our outings, allowing for all four wheels instead of being the dreaded third wheel. I think they wanted us to date (I say I think this, but I know this very well since her significant other was always telling the poor brother to kiss me. He never did. Maybe I should have done the honors).
Not that I’m an old woman with a hundred years of experience behind me, but I’ve lived a little life, now. And I’ve mostly done it alone. Sure, I’ve had roommates during college, but they come and go. I’m still friends with most of them, but we don’t chat every day. We don’t send good morning texts to each other or check in to make sure we’ve come in for the night. We’re not close anymore. After college, I lived alone. I got up by myself every morning (not completely alone, I had my trusty four-legged companion taking up two-thirds of my bed). I made two eggs most mornings, one for me and one for myself. A single cup of coffee from my Keurig. A single slice of toast from a loaf of bread that lasts me until it molds because I cannot eat much by myself. If I watched TV, I laughed to myself. Occasionally my four-legged companion would bark at the television if he saw a dog, bunny, horse, or any other suspicious looking creature on the fake window. When I would have bad days, I never had to take myself to my room and cry by myself. No, I sat on the couch and cried, I stood in the kitchen and cried. I never stood in front of my security camera that I have set up in case something happens to me—so that at least someone would know what happened. My four-legged companion wouldn’t be a good witness, I don’t think. Sometimes I would find myself talking out loud just to hear my voice, just to be sure my vocal cords were still working properly. Sometimes I would sing. It wasn’t until just a few months ago that I became incredibly sad every time I caught myself waltzing from my kitchen into my living room with my imaginary dance partner.
The earlier-mentioned equation rang true with my parents, too. Being a teenager, there were a few times when I wanted to just spend time with one parent, not both. But they were always a packaged deal. If one came, the other came. If one didn’t want to go, then suddenly neither did the other. If I wanted to go to Ulta with my mom, my dad would linger around behind us while I searched through whatever beauty product I wanted that day. There were exceptions to this unspoken rule, of course, but that was mostly how it had always been. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for what I’m about to say. But here goes. You know those his and hers toilets? We didn’t have those, but they’re the kind of people that might have actually made them work. They genuinely liked being in each other’s presence.
And then one day, my dad left the house to go to the hospital and he never came back. The last time he walked down those front porch steps would be the last time his feet ever stepped on that property. I don’t know when the last time was that I was sitting in the back seat of their car, cringing over the fact that they always hold hands on the console, but I wish I would’ve documented it now. I wish I didn’t have to just rely on my faulty memory to store those moments. I wish I could see it one more time.
My dad was the doer. He liked to go places and constantly be working on something if he was at home. My mom just enjoyed the company. She would help make the building plans, and my dad would execute them. She would ride in the car with him to the parts store or the home improvement store. Now she goes to work and she goes home. She goes to the grocery because she has to. She makes dinner for one. She buys groceries for one. She sometimes criticizes the size of the house, the fact that there are too many rooms or that the rooms themselves are too spacey. Is that still freedom?
When the shutdowns first started happening due to Covid, I felt like I had been caged. I felt like my driver’s license had been taken, my legs had been stolen, and like I was shut off from the world in such a disgraceful move. Now that everything is back to mostly normal—at least in the way the businesses are functioning, not in the way there are empty spots in people’s homes and hearts—I sometimes find myself wishing for that house arrest once more without the addition of a pandemic. I want the busyness to calm down again. I want to bake bread. I want to FaceTime friends. I want to be reminded constantly of how important hugs are. How quickly I’ve taken that all for granted.
Sometimes we need something to tie us down, otherwise we become so free we become collateral damage of the wind. One big whoosh of confusion and we’re back on the ground, trying to understand which way is up. Sometimes the freedom isn’t really freedom at all, sometimes we’re gambling with the wind and hoping we land upright, not dazed and confused.
Is it freedom? Is it loneliness? I ask those questions to myself, and a voice in my head answers. After all, it’s the only conversation partner I have.
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