Coveting time alone can feel like the last taboo. It is a hunger we are reluctant to acknowledge, except maybe to each other, whispering furtively on the phone . Some married women admit to liking a night to themselves as if it were a sexual deviancy. A woman whose husband travels a lot exclaims, ”You can have cereal for dinner if you want!” I heard a women say that she claps her hands when she comes home to an empty house. Even little girls understand. A friend read Goldilocks and the Three Bears to her daughter who then asked what was wrong with the bears.
“ I mean who barges in like that?” she said.
We crave solitude in secret because we know too well that “ I want to be by myself” too often translates to ” I don’t want to be with you ” and we don’t want to make excuses or hurt feelings. That’s part of the self – consciousness , the what’s – wrong – with – me part. We feel we have to ask for time to ourselves, as if it were a gift coming from another. In a life of necessity, distraction and scattered forces, though, we instinctively rescue a sliver for ourselves. We need it, we chase it, we get it, we breathe, and the world simmers down.
And, of course, there are the women who don’t seek solitude, but find it anyway. A beautiful widow named Jane says she has to figure out a way to get used to the “new different.” According to the 2006 U.S. Census, nearly half of women 35 or older live alone. The largest percentage are 45 to 64. Some by choice, some by circumstance, some by eventuality. Some would trade anything to get their old lives back, and some, like me, are exploring this quiet culture.
And some of us glory in our solitude…we love it, we celebrate it and we can’t understand why other people don’t “get it”.