Living Alone

It has been a long winter this year. It has been grayer than most and colder than most. The snow came more often and didn’t go away. For three months life goes numb and the silence takes over.

This is part of living alone.

In the cold dull days of winter not only are you trapped within the four walls but within the silence? There is no amount of lights to turn on that replaces the sunshine. There is no distraction that will keep the walls from closing in.

In the dark days of winter, living alone becomes an obsession. There are sounds that are not really there. There are shadows in the corners that are not really there. There are thoughts that fill the mind in the deafening silence that only return in the dreams. Maybe they really are there?

Snuggling under a blanket doesn’t help because when you get back up, the silence still there. The cold. The snow. Silence is the darkness that overcomes this season.

Even the constant scanning of social media with all the children playing in the snow and the dogs playing in the snow and the kittens tumbling in  the covers and the folks complaining about digging out doesn’t help. All the news sources that have the same stories over and over again besides how many times does anyone need to read so much of this junk?

Without someone telling you to put down the lid or take out the trash or pick up your socks or sliding over hairballs or shooing away fur-balls or interrupted by nuisance, the house is quiet and you are alone. Make dinner whenever you want to and take a bath when you just feel like it. Sleep all day and wake up whenever you want to because you are living alone.

Winter is an imprisonment in silence.

Wander the empty house from room to room and never hear a sound. Sit and listen to nothing.

Radio and downloads and even desperation television can bring in noise, but there is still silence. The noise will only numb the inevitable silence that surrounds every moment of time.

Tomorrow will be like today and after that the same will be the constant silence.

Friends will offer various acceptable solutions but the solutions have been tried and sources unknown to most have been experimented with but there is still silence.

For living alone is about living with you.

Living in silence and accepting it is living alone. No matter the season, living alone is the silence.