The Meaning of Alone

Alone means many things in my life. I used to think alone meant loneliness. There used to be a great fear of being alone in my daily life, and I often think it was rooted in being born a twin. Until I was 18, that person was pretty much always there...we sang together, had the same friends, and leaned on each other for everything.

Then he went to the military in a dramatic way and really never came back to me. It was a crushing time in my life. I was not prepared to be an adult and there was no one to lean on. My parents were a wreck waiting to happen. My mother the prescription addict and my father fenced stolen shipping goods to supplement their lifestyle. That sounds so outrageous but it's true. On the surface they were middle class people who played bridge on Friday night. My father was the choir director for heaven's sake.

So I went into adulthood completely alone. I hadn't made real friends when we moved, at age 15, to a farm because I was an outsider in a rural farming community. I couldn't have been more isolated.

Then I got married to avoid being alone at night. I did love him, but I was 19 and terrified pretty much everyday because I had to leave my parent's home. My mother had moved out just before I decided the answer to my problems was to get pregnant, then he would marry me. That led to lots more drama and heartache. After I put him through three years of college, I pushed him out of our house and then took up with another man - because I was afraid to be alone at night.

Life was so reckless during those years. I am sure my brain's frontal lobe had not developed because I made decisions that were almost certainly going to have dire consequences, but I followed through with those decisions, and they definitely had dire consequences, almost costing me my life.

Today is a completely different story with a different definition of alone.