60, Sex & Tango, Confessions of A Beatnik Boomer excerpt from
Chapter 11
BEING ALONE: IT HURTS SO GOOD
I used to think that living alone for the rest of my life was going to be the worst thing that could befall me. The idea of aloneness was disturbing and often frightening. I don’t know exactly how long it took me to overcome my fear of living alone. Maybe it was many years, maybe it was yesterday, maybe I’m still afraid.
Previously, and sometimes now intermittently, I felt that being alone was causing an ever-increasing rise in my stress levels. I even had persistent heartburn. There were no contrasts in my life. If my life were a canvas, it would be the color gray I was often tired but never lethargic. I entertained retiring, but from what? Life? Retirement was a terrifying thought, like facing certain death. Or was I going to succumb to the ties that bind and move to Las Vegas with the prospects of becoming an on-call babysitter to my grandsons? What was going to happen to my personal life? Would I ever fall in love again, or would any man have the courage to love me again after David sweep me off my feet? And then there were those terrifying moments when I felt I never wanted to write or dance again.
Then without warning, I began to step outside myself and see myself as a sentient and conscious being. It happened with I was meditating. It was a fleeting moment. I was distancing myself from myself, which produced a state of detachment about who I am in the present and what I was able to control and not control. As a result, I was able to cultivate some clear emotions regarding who I am, what I want, and where I was going.
Then one day, without warning, out of the blue on a Sunday, I didn’t need to call a guy friend to help me get through the seventh day of the week. I could actually live by myself without haring the dreaded Sunday with another human being. Sunday, bloody Sunday, was gone. I was over being alone.