I’ve found myself in a place that has become, over the years, unfamiliar territory. When I was a girl, and then a teenager, and then a young adult I was terrifically anti-social. It’s because of the writing, you see. It’s an extremely anti-social habit. It calls for you to exclude all others and focus on just that one thing, regardless of other interests, it’s all-consuming (I’ve said this before).
I wrote like a living demon when I was young. Totally focused, I had written my first book by the time I was 17 and my second was finished a few years later. I sold short stories to my favourite magazine at the time, Just 17 (remember that?) and I started out by typing on a manual typewriter that I’d inherited from someone or the other, moving on to an electric typewriter bought from WH Smith (along with ribbons, paper and tippex!)
It wasn’t that I didn’t have friends. That’s a writer’s biggest dilemma. I love people. I love people’s stories. I love communicating with people, but especially listening. I had a grand circle of friends, but mainly I wrote. Solitary confinement if you like. Because that was my calling. And I loved it. But then I did what my A Level English teacher advised me never to do. “Don’t stop writing in your 20s,” she said. “That was the mistake I made.” She watched as I sold story after story when I was studying for my A Levels, and she also said I had an unusual gift for under statement. I never knew what that meant really.
But then I made the fatal mistake. I ignored the advice and I followed the familiar old path in my 20s, getting married, buying the house, hosting the dinner parties and I became We and suddenly I was no longer Me and I was part of a couple. It’s no secret that marriage according to the law of this country is the union of one man with one woman voluntarily entered into for life, to the EXCLUSION OF ALL OTHERS.
This was my new writing then. This was my journey into a new kind of solitary confinement. I lost my love for writing, and actually I lost myself. Because we could only afford one car, I lost my passion for driving because, for some strange reason, men have to do all the driving when you’re a couple, they are in control of the wheel, they know the way to places, and they can perform better on the clutch apparently! Who knew? So many women, even in this enlightened age, just expect to be ferried around and carted here and there even though they have legitimately passed their driving test. Maybe it’s just laziness? Maybe it’s just habit? Or maybe it’s that thing about women can’t actually do things on their own, and if they do, perhaps society will stop perpetuating the myth that women aren’t as good as men at certain things (except having babies and housework – and quite frankly, why would men want to do any of that stuff?)
But I digress, when you come out of the other end of a long marriage (and I don’t necessarily mean splitting up or getting divorced) but when you’ve done all the things that couples do in the early years, build the nest, raise the family, and other couples split up so you’re the only couple left who are still together, and maybe you’ve grown apart and don’t actually do anything together anymore that doesn’t involve the children or the family, then suddenly there is a freedom to be alone again.
And I say freedom because I don’t think people actually get the value of being alone. The freedom of cooking exactly what you like for yourself without having to consider others, the value of being able to get in the car and drive where you like, stop when you like, come back when you like, the quiet spaces that only you have to fill, or not if you choose to do nothing. I’m spending more and more time on my own (again, there will always be those people on Facebook who like to point out that you’re ‘billy no mates’ if you post something you do on your own without tagging anyone – but I have lots of friends and enjoy lots of sociable times, go fine dining, meeting up for drinks, shopping, theatre trips, weekends away) but I DO love to just shut my door and be alone. And now, more and more, going out on my own. Not having to please anyone but me. Is that selfish? Or is that just a really nice place to have reached where you’re so comfortable in your own skin that you really like spending time with yourself?
Last weekend I popped out to do a bit of shopping and just fancied a glass of bubbly, a bit of dinner and a trip to the cinema. I have actually been to the cinema (and the theatre) with people who have fallen asleep so I think I’m actually better company than any of those people! I went to Wetherspoons and they’ve introduced a new App where you can order table service – you can’t imagine what a god send this is for people who are eating out on their own! Because everyone knows that it’s physically impossible to get a table on your own, then order at the bar with your table number – because you don’t want to leave your bags unattended and someone will inevitably nick your table while your back is turned!
How nice was it to sit, order, wait for my drink and food to arrive and then toddle off to the cinema to see a film I wanted to see (although I couldn’t get the top off my bottle of wine and had to get some assistance – weak wrists). Not enough people do this, and I think, especially for women, even these days, it’s not seen as the done thing to do things on your own and heavens above, actually enjoy them. It’s as if you can’t enjoy things if you don’t have someone to share them with. I know a woman at work (you know who you are!) and she’s my absolute hero… she’s just been off to foreign shores, booked the honeymoon suite for herself as it was the best room in the hotel… and she has no qualms about eating by herself and getting around on her own (yes she also drives herself around in a car very similar to mine!) and, do you know what, she looks like she’s having a fabulous time. I take all of my hats off to her. Of course, she would love to share some of those things with someone, the elusive ‘Mr Right’ maybe (good luck with that) but why sit around waiting for someone to validate your enjoyment? That’s my point.
And I do the same, I often go off and do a Park Run in different places, matching them up with a National Trust property to visit at the same time. I’ll go to the theatre on my own because I haven’t met anyone who loves Shakespeare in quite the same way as I do and I’m happy to sign up for talks, lectures, seminars and happy to go it alone. I don’t have to worry if someone else is enjoying it, I don’t have to compromise to fit in with someone else’s preferences and I can change my mind at the drop of a hat.
Maybe more places should be like Wetherspoons? Maybe restaurants should promote tables for 1 and have tables for 1 set up just in case that self-confessed loner rocks up and doesn’t want to feel bad for taking up space on a table designed for 4. Maybe society should gear itself up for the singular rather than always focusing on the plural? Even when you go shopping for food, it’s virtually impossible to get single things – it’s usually packed into twos. The world is full of things created for two rather than one. Maybe we should take the anti-social stigma out of valuable alone time. Maybe we shouldn’t judge people who enjoy spending time with themselves.
Sometimes, some people just WANT to be alone*.
*And that’s not Marlene Deitrich, because she never actually said that. She said: “I want to be let alone.” That’s two very different things.
Mags Winthrop Blog 