When I worked fulltime, traveling and also attempting to keep everything running at home, all I ever wanted was time to myself. I know no woman my age who doesn’t long for an empty house every once in a while. Who am I kidding? They want it often.
Now, I find myself home alone more than I’m not, with my husband and friends at work. It is a solitary, lonely, isolating existence. Being at home instead of out in the world every day like everyone else, interacting with all types of people, has been a difficult adjustment. I have built myself a life at home that is busy but it is a completely different life than the one I led for forty-seven years before the last five. I am a social person and although I text my husband and friends during the day, if not for Piper, our parrot, I would not speak a word to anyone for ten hours most days. My professional skills and experience have sat mainly dormant and I have missed making a contribution in the traditional, familiar sense, although I do hope this blog has reached someone who needed it.
Over this last year I have begun to venture out more and more, slowly returning to some places and activities I would not have thought twice about, let alone once, before, but are now downright scary. As I put myself back out there, I am reminded of the life I lost and aware of my challenges now. It can feel very “square peg, round hole” -ish. But nothing is more unnatural to me than being isolated from the world. None of us should live that way. Although this is our one life, it is not meant to be a life of one.
