A Woman Alone | By Pam Stewart

Photo by Pam Stewart

Read this essay on Elephant Journal! I have chosen to live my life alone.  Isn’t that something?  A woman’s life being completely her own?  My money, my sex, my time; my flirtations and relationships: they are all mine.  It’s ok, you know, to choose to be single with no ambitions of anything else. You may not know that because we’re not told that -- as women, as people.  We’re not told that there is an alternative to what the teen magazines and then Cosmo, what Disney and then Reese Witherspoon sold us: It’s ok to not be in, wanting, or looking for a relationship. I didn’t know this.  For a very long time I’ve actively undermined what my heart and body must have always known.  I doubted myself, mistrusted myself, and was constantly praying for love, was constantly confused and frustrated when I would get what I thought I wanted and feel trapped.  But I wasn’t praying for love, but instead what I thought was love.  I was praying for an EASY button, praying for an escape from the work of being alive.  I bought what I’d been sold and was convinced that a man would bring me the satisfaction I found to be lacking in my life. And the universe loves to give us that which we ask for so, time and time again, I’d be gifted with beautiful opportunities for sex and intimacy and romantic coupledom.  But always I’d find ways to wriggle out of them -- whether through sabotage or not, often just by looking for the nearest exit.  But at least this way people thought I was normal, thought I was at least trying, and I felt relief in that (though I couldn’t quite explain why, yet).   I should have known something wasn’t right.  Should have known that the relief I felt each time something ended was a sign.  Every time, after I’d dealt with the regret of what felt like misleading another (even though I didn’t know how I’d done so), after dealing with the guilt of not being what others wanted me to be, then always came the exhalation.  The breath I didn’t know I was holding would at last return to normal and I’d feel like myself again. It’s always the same, the feeling of having to give too much of myself.  The giving/losing of my energy to beautiful men who for some reason choose ME -- but they and it are never enough.  At this point, perfect wouldn’t be enough.  Because I am not prepared to share myself, my time, my energy with another.   God, what a selfish woman, indeed (said with no irony). I am not meant for it right now.  And I didn’t even know such a thing was an option.  I have been chasing this vision, this idea for so long, being so hard on myself for never being able to feel satisfied when I found it, and all this time it never even occurred to me that there was an alternative.   I can think of no role model who was ever celebrated for living her life alone.  All women who have done so, that I know of, have been called crazy, or spinster, or cat lady.  There’s a lack of femininity, a lacking in your womanhood and your value to choose this life.  It would never be believed that it was, indeed, a choice.  It’s an assumed short-coming on your part, to not have, be able to keep, or be chosen by a man. I ended it with someone recently and now the fear is leading me to believe it was a mistake.   It’s scary.  It’s damn scary.  To leave something that is still working because you’re breathing has become too shallow, because you haven’t written in days, and having no one waiting for you in the wings.  It’s walking into the wilderness without a lantern and knowing you chose this for yourself, that you could just not go and wait to be rescued.  Because what is more feminine than awaiting rescue?   But of course I see that I am the wilderness.  The dark recesses of myself are the unexplored and unfamiliar.  And I can accept that, see that, choose to dwell in that; or I can call him or someone else, and use them as a safeguard against experiencing my own alone-ness, seeing what it is I am afraid to come face to face with.  For me, that’s what most of my relationships have been -- a buffer between me and myself. I have found that the best part about being with someone is being able to tether yourself to another.  It’s confirmation and affirmation of your own existence.  I think that’s why we so often stay in bad relationships -- because we forget or are too out of practice of doing it on our own.  It’s likely the reason we are so afraid to sit still without distraction.  Silence is just a little too infinite, a little too vast to not be fearsome. I am a woman alone; a woman assumed to be lonely.   And maybe I am.  Maybe that’s what fuels my writing, my art, my productivity.  I get soft when I find myself in a couple.  And I’ve got too much left to do yet.  Too much to still become to be taken down by complacency.  I find that I put the onus of my happiness and satisfaction on my partner when coupled up.  I stop working on myself, owning my own experience and grow lazy.   But there are times that I worry I cannot be trusted.  That how is it everyone seems to know this one thing that I don’t?  That surely everyone confused by my choices, everyone looking at me with pity -- you went on another trip alone?  You spent another holiday alone?  everyone telling me, “there are plenty of fish in the sea,” when something ends -- surely they must know something that I don’t. But then I remember: I KNOW there are plenty of fish in the sea.  I could cast a net and draw in 3 right now.  I can’t get away from all the damn fish.  I am, every other week, caught up in a new entanglement.  And as soon as I’ve wormed myself way away from one relationship, another one has found me.   Partly, I know I’m still doing this in order to appease the masses -- those that think 30 is high time to settle down.  And maybe this is my ‘coming out’ letter, letting them know that I may not ever.  I am not immune to the pressure, the pressure to start thinking about babies, to the questions I see in people’s eyes, “Why can’t she keep a man…?”  The answer, I have to think, is because at some point it always starts to feel like I am the one who is being kept.  Like I am the one unable to move freely anymore. I am exactly what the masses think that I am: lonely.  But only because I am alive.  Only because I am human, no more or less so than when I am in a relationship.  No more so than when I have a partner’s arms wrapped around me at night.  The dark side of lonely comes only when we deny our alone-ness.  When we think there is some other alternative.  That maybe if we own or are owned by another, that if we get enough of a certain kind of love, or have achieved a certain kind of body, certain level of bank balance, that then we will be something other than how we came into this world and how we will leave it. There is something deeply satisfying to going about my life this way.  Even to the sadness that goes along with it.  The sadness that is likely there for those in duos but less obviously and nameably so.  It is nice being tethered to someone.  Gaging your existence and your life by that of another.  There is something grounding and reassuring to it.  Something concrete that I’ll admit is sometimes lacking in my life.  But for me this is the honest choice.   If I had 9 lives, I would devote 8 of them to committed, romantic relationships, but this is the only one I can feel truthful about pursuing right now.  The lack of tether, of concrete point of reference generally feels like floating -- and it’s the delicate balance between letting yourself trust that you’re ok versus letting your fear take over.  The extremes of the spectrum, of being alone intentionally, are either 1) feeling like you are falling down an elevator shaft or 2) feeling like you are cliff-diving (the only difference being one gives you a sense of control).   But there is one other sensation to living your life alone, and it’s rare, but every so often it’ll feel like you’re flying.

Read this essay on Elephant Journal!

I have chosen to live my life alone.  Isn’t that something?  A woman’s life being completely her own?  My money, my sex, my time; my flirtations and relationships: they are all mine.  It’s ok, you know, to choose to be single with no ambitions of anything else.

You may not know that because we’re not told that -- as women, as people.  We’re not told that there is an alternative to what the teen magazines and then Cosmo, what Disney and then Reese Witherspoon sold us:

It’s ok to not be in, wanting, or looking for a relationship.

I didn’t know this.  For a very long time I’ve actively undermined what my heart and body must have always known.  I doubted myself, mistrusted myself, and was constantly praying for love, was constantly confused and frustrated when I would get what I thought I wanted and feel trapped.  But I wasn’t praying for love, but instead what I thought was love.  I was praying for an EASY button, praying for an escape from the work of being alive.  I bought what I’d been sold and was convinced that a man would bring me the satisfaction I found to be lacking in my life.

And the universe loves to give us that which we ask for so, time and time again, I’d be gifted with beautiful opportunities for sex and intimacy and romantic coupledom.  But always I’d find ways to wriggle out of them -- whether through sabotage or not, often just by looking for the nearest exit.  But at least this way people thought I was normal, thought I was at least trying, and I felt relief in that (though I couldn’t quite explain why, yet).  

I should have known something wasn’t right.  Should have known that the relief I felt each time something ended was a sign.  Every time, after I’d dealt with the regret of what felt like misleading another (even though I didn’t know how I’d done so), after dealing with the guilt of not being what others wanted me to be, then always came the exhalation.  The breath I didn’t know I was holding would at last return to normal and I’d feel like myself again.

It’s always the same, the feeling of having to give too much of myself.  The giving/losing of my energy to beautiful men who for some reason choose ME -- but they and it are never enough.  At this point, perfect wouldn’t be enough.  Because I am not prepared to share myself, my time, my energy with another.  

God, what a selfish woman, indeed (said with no irony).

I am not meant for it right now.  And I didn’t even know such a thing was an option.  I have been chasing this vision, this idea for so long, being so hard on myself for never being able to feel satisfied when I found it, and all this time it never even occurred to me that there was an alternative.  

I can think of no role model who was ever celebrated for living her life alone.  All women who have done so, that I know of, have been called crazy, or spinster, or cat lady.  There’s a lack of femininity, a lacking in your womanhood and your value to choose this life.  It would never be believed that it was, indeed, a choice.  It’s an assumed short-coming on your part, to not have, be able to keep, or be chosen by a man.

I ended it with someone recently and now the fear is leading me to believe it was a mistake.  

It’s scary.  It’s damn scary.  To leave something that is still working because you’re breathing has become too shallow, because you haven’t written in days, and having no one waiting for you in the wings.  It’s walking into the wilderness without a lantern and knowing you chose this for yourself, that you could just not go and wait to be rescued.  Because what is more feminine than awaiting rescue?  

But of course I see that I am the wilderness.  The dark recesses of myself are the unexplored and unfamiliar.  And I can accept that, see that, choose to dwell in that; or I can call him or someone else, and use them as a safeguard against experiencing my own alone-ness, seeing what it is I am afraid to come face to face with.  For me, that’s what most of my relationships have been -- a buffer between me and myself.

I have found that the best part about being with someone is being able to tether yourself to another.  It’s confirmation and affirmation of your own existence.  I think that’s why we so often stay in bad relationships -- because we forget or are too out of practice of doing it on our own.  It’s likely the reason we are so afraid to sit still without distraction.  Silence is just a little too infinite, a little too vast to not be fearsome.

I am a woman alone; a woman assumed to be lonely.  

And maybe I am.  Maybe that’s what fuels my writing, my art, my productivity.  I get soft when I find myself in a couple.  And I’ve got too much left to do yet.  Too much to still become to be taken down by complacency.  I find that I put the onus of my happiness and satisfaction on my partner when coupled up.  I stop working on myself, owning my own experience and grow lazy.  

But there are times that I worry I cannot be trusted.  That how is it everyone seems to know this one thing that I don’t?  That surely everyone confused by my choices, everyone looking at me with pity -- you went on another trip alone?  You spent another holiday alone?  everyone telling me, “there are plenty of fish in the sea,” when something ends -- surely they must know something that I don’t.

But then I remember:

I KNOW there are plenty of fish in the sea.  I could cast a net and draw in 3 right now.  I can’t get away from all the damn fish.  I am, every other week, caught up in a new entanglement.  And as soon as I’ve wormed myself way away from one relationship, another one has found me.  

Partly, I know I’m still doing this in order to appease the masses -- those that think 30 is high time to settle down.  And maybe this is my ‘coming out’ letter, letting them know that I may not ever.  I am not immune to the pressure, the pressure to start thinking about babies, to the questions I see in people’s eyes, “Why can’t she keep a man…?”  The answer, I have to think, is because at some point it always starts to feel like I am the one who is being kept.  Like I am the one unable to move freely anymore.

I am exactly what the masses think that I am: lonely.  But only because I am alive.  Only because I am human, no more or less so than when I am in a relationship.  No more so than when I have a partner’s arms wrapped around me at night.  The dark side of lonely comes only when we deny our alone-ness.  When we think there is some other alternative.  That maybe if we own or are owned by another, that if we get enough of a certain kind of love, or have achieved a certain kind of body, certain level of bank balance, that then we will be something other than how we came into this world and how we will leave it.

There is something deeply satisfying to going about my life this way.  Even to the sadness that goes along with it.  The sadness that is likely there for those in duos but less obviously and nameably so.  It is nice being tethered to someone.  Gaging your existence and your life by that of another.  There is something grounding and reassuring to it.  Something concrete that I’ll admit is sometimes lacking in my life.  But for me this is the honest choice.  

If I had 9 lives, I would devote 8 of them to committed, romantic relationships, but this is the only one I can feel truthful about pursuing right now.  The lack of tether, of concrete point of reference generally feels like floating -- and it’s the delicate balance between letting yourself trust that you’re ok versus letting your fear take over.  The extremes of the spectrum, of being alone intentionally, are either 1) feeling like you are falling down an elevator shaft or 2) feeling like you are cliff-diving (the only difference being one gives you a sense of control).  

But there is one other sensation to living your life alone, and it’s rare, but every so often it’ll feel like you’re flying.