h2>Dating : Solitude is My Love Language
What happens when all you want is to be alone, even during isolation?
I stared at the screen, told Alexa, that little government spy bot on my desk, to play David Bowie on Apple Music, and then I listened and I wept. So few artists can make me cry anymore. I miss music that can make me cry. I miss the smell of Noxema, rubber bracelets wound with rope and string knots of friendship, posters on the wall, bed on the floor, the blacked out windows of teen rebellion, and free-flowing tears mourning the collective invisibility of adolescence, while under the microscope of this performer, this songwriter who traversed time and space to uniquely share my singular experience of angst, fear, and exhilaration. A typical mid-life almost-50 mourning period, mostly I miss the luxury of solitary mourning.
This is the part where I say I love my family, and I do. I’m also eternally grateful that I’m not forced to march through this period of quarantine completely alone. Our little band of people and dogs, we are in this together. Salut! Caveats aside, I yearn for the echoing silence of an empty house, the assurance that my space, my desires, my mind is my own and not parceled out in chunks big and small to my co-isolationists. We have boundaries, yes. What I crave though is the assurance of singular demand on my mind, my body, my creativity, my heart, the security of endless silence and sole ownership of time. My mouth waters of the thought.
Solitude is my love language, and I’m a sailor on leave looking to score. Then I realize, yes I’m missing the freedom of being alone that’s true, but what’s really stuck in my craw, making me itch, what’s driving me to distraction is the lack of calm — of peace. There is no peace to be had amidst uncertainty. Sure, there’s fake-it-til-you-make-it peace in meditation, yoga, long walks the few times we go outside, but deep-down, gut-level, in-your-spleen peace? Nah. Not in the middle of a pandemic. Solitude slung a pack over its shoulder, grabbed Peace by the hand, and jumped onto a freight train to see the country and live off the land, and they left me behind. Fuckers.
Ask me tomorrow and I’ll be totally fine. Well, ask me before noon, or after dinner if we’ve also had wine. Sound familiar? Maybe, or maybe this is all as foreign to you as a deep-seeded need for solitude during isolation. If anything, this is a time of paradox. It’s time to innovate, grow, and lead AND it’s time to grieve, shelter, and mourn. It’s a reset for our beleaguered planet, and a tip into the chasm for the legions of marginalized people already living on the edge before before this never-ending pandemic house party. Incredible acts of kindness and horrific acts of selfishness. It’s humanity laid bare, and me without a singer who can make me cry like Bowie or dance like Prince. The mourning began in 2016 and it’s only now that the grief’s caught up. All I want is a little solitude to mourn, even in isolation, even while we’re all alone together.
