On Loneliness

I was truly alone for the only time in my life last summer. My confidante was gone, pursuing the opportunities for travel given in return for seven years of your life to the US government. I lived in a house with three other people, but they were involved in their own lives, not ignoring me, but not being particularly forthcoming.

I had a routine. Wake up, go to the coffee shop to brush up on my chemistry for the fall. Come home, eat a small lunch, go to work. After work to the terrace, alone with a book or to write a letter. Watch the ducklings and the rising lake level and other peoples' children. Walk up State Street, pick up some old movies from the library. Go home, read on the porch or at the coffee shop. Watch a movie, lazily do yoga. Go to sleep.

I saw my friends sometimes of course. We would sit on the porch and smoke or drink, intermittently chatting up and harassing pedestrians. Having the kind of long, intricate discussions about ourselves that I imagine stop once you have children and grow up, replaced by stories about bowel movements and nursing bras.

But really, I was quite alone. No one pressed me for details about my life.

It gave me an odd sense of serenity. Those two months were the only ones I had without any obligations. I walked through the streets of Madison and every hour was only mine. It streamlined the rest of the world, like watching my biography being played out on the screen. There was a single interpretation, the vision of the director.

My days weren't filled with self-reflection, but with observing other people. No longer distracted by creating documentary of my day to relate to someone at night, I focused on the details of the lives of others. I eavesdropped on conversations while bussing tables, watched people squawk about produce to one another at the farmers' market. I saw people come to the coffee shop alone, like I did, every night. We snuck glances at eachother over the edges of our ambitious summer reads, books on European politics or literary classics not yet tainted by Oprah's hoard of housewives. We shook the ice in our drinks to bring attention to ourselves, tapping to get the last few sticky cubes to slide into our mouths and watched one another through the wavy iced coffee glazed lenses of the glasses' bottoms.

One night, I went home from the cafe and sat on my porch before going in, watching the buses pass with tired hisses. One of my fellow loners walked by, glanced up, faltered and then continued on. He returned five minutes later and came halfway up the steps, said he recognized me and did I want to take a walk.

No, I said, thank you.

I saw him a week later at the cafe, and within ten minutes a girlfriend appeared twittering into her phone about a new apartment. He glanced at me sheepishly, but I smiled back, straw between my lips. There was no need to apologize, my last sips told him.

I was fine on my own.