Word Count: 262
So now I have it, the freedom to take trips, to sleep on the couch all night if I want to, the ice cream for dinner and leftover pizza for breakfast and candy for lunch. All the routines and schedules and expecteds drift off as the regulations of marriage fade, all that dependence and waiting and having to smile.
I lived alone several times in between roommates and live-in lovers and two husbands, and it’s never been a sad lonely time for me. Never needed any great adjustment, no bulk-buying of tissues, any desperate calls to friends in the night. Never even needed chocolate for solace.
Life alone is not as alone as living with someone who doesn’t care that you’re there. It’s only extra underwear to wash and more shirts to iron. It’s twice the work for a widower, they say, and half the work for a widow. Alone is ironing a half hour before you’re going out, after you’ve pulled your selection from the smash of blouses in the closet.
Did you know that dust looks the same at two months as it does at two weeks? And that unnecessary dusting was done because we didn’t want to look lazy and slovenly to someone who wouldn’t have noticed the dust anyway? It’s a rush to not dust every Saturday. To not vacuum until the crumbs make squeaking noises as you walk across the kitchen floor.
I miss him, yes. But yet, I don’t miss him at all, because I have me, and me doesn’t ask much at all.
