Alone

Alone won’t let you wear your fancy bracelet, the kind that has a latch and needs three hands to get it onto your wrist.  

Alone says no to that becoming dress, the one with the tight bodice that won’t give so you can scootch it up in back, and you can zip it all the way to the top.  

Alone thinks it’s a bad idea to bake your favorite cake recipe or that meatloaf you love to make with real mashed potatoes and the green bean casserole - unless you want to eat it all week long or freeze the remainder into a dozen plastic lunch containers.

Alone won’t listen to your joke or your story, and it gives useless advice on your latest wacky idea.   

Alone doesn’t care if you steal the covers, hide the remote, or lie about the bathroom scales.

Alone gladly gives up the second seat at the theatre or the symphony so you can use it for your purse and coat.

Alone lets you be the hero of your life’s story, wear the pants, be the boss of you. It gladly lets you swat at the spider, squash the water bug, and shoo the salamander, but then refuses to help dispose of their dead bodies afterwards.

Alone ignores you as you struggle with that clumsy box Fed Ex just left on your front step.  It looks the other way as you drag the trash bin to the curb and just sits, like a lump, in the front seat of the car while you figure out how to jump start the dead battery.

Alone doesn’t take up much room at the restaurant at your table for one. It lets you eat all the tortilla chips and won’t steal your guacamole.

Alone doesn’t care that you watch too many musicals and chick flicks, and doesn’t eat your dark chocolate candy or your Blue Bell then hide the empties at the bottom of the trash can.  

Alone won’t get you a bandage, warm you a bowl of chicken soup, or check on those noises coming from the kitchen in the middle of the night.

Alone doesn’t care about your feelings but that is okay.  You can live alone.  It’s when Alone sometimes brings home an unwanted guest – Loneliness - most often it is in the middle of the night or on a weekend, and suddenly being alone looks different.   

Loneliness amplifies everything, and everything you see loses its color or its fun or its warmth. Problems become insurmountable.

You hate bracelets and hard-to-zip dresses.  You want to haggle with someone over the covers or the remote or what movies to watch at the cinema.  You wish someone was stealing your chocolate or the guacamole off your Number One Mexican Special.  You want someone (besides your pillows or the cats) who talks and listens, laughs and argues, and takes turns with you taking out the trash.  Best of all, you want someone – another human being – who cares enough about you to get you a Band Aid, eat your cooking, and get up in the middle of the night to check for zombies.