This morning I woke up early, poured myself some coffee, and said a weepy goodbye to my lovely husband. He's a writer whose third, and most important, book has just come out, and he's headed off on a national book tour for several months.
He travels often, but even the dog seemed to know he'd been gone for awhile this time. She chased him down the stairs of our apartment building in a hysterical howling fashion, and since he left, she's been glued to the windowsill, nothing but watchful waiting.
This is an exciting opportunity for him, and it's also kind of one for me. I'm 32 years old and I've never lived alone. I've lived with roommates in many, many apartments - in Florida, in London, in Hoboken and in Manhattan. Roommates who were close friends of mine, roommates who were strangers I found in the wilds of Craigslist. I always knew, as a teenager, that having a few years to live on my own was something I needed to do. And I considered living with a roommate to still be living on my own. The desire to be alone-alone just wasn't something I possessed. I just wanted my own room, in a town of my own choosing. I wanted to paint my bedroom walls any color I wanted, and pick out my own bedspread, and have my own shelf in the kitchen. That was enough for me.
I also wanted friends within reach, and that's where the roommate idea came into play. In high school and college, my mom used to tease me for my love of the TV show Friends. "That's not real life," she'd say, with a sniff. "People don't really live that way, so get used to it."
And I remember thinking, even as a teenager - but...yes, they do. And that's what I wanted. So, that's what I created. And it was a lot of fun, while it was happening. In particular I loved watching Lost with Karen, my brief-stint-in-NYC roommate, while her little dog napped in his bed in the corner.
But it's true that I've never genuinely lived alone. And while Hollsby (le husband) will only be gone for a couple of months - maybe two, maybe three, with occasional drop-ins back home for a night or so - I'm going to look upon it as my own little solo adventure.
If I want to walk in the front door after a day at work, make myself popcorn for dinner, and sit around eating it in my underwear while watching girly movies, so be it. If I want to go out every night, so be that, too. If I want to not use the stove even one time, except for as a storage device for my extra pots and pans, well, fuck it, whose going to stop me?
I joked to him, just last night, that without him here to cook for me I will probably forget to eat. He will likely return home to a rail-thin wife with a drinking problem and also maybe a tattoo because that is something I've been casually pondering.
He considered this. "The tattoo is fine," he pronounced. "Maybe not so much with the rail thin, though."
He was away earlier in the summer for a week, and I went briefly insane. I boarded our dog so I wouldn't have to take care of anything, and went out every single night - to literary readings, to parties, to the movies. I ate almost nothing except for cereal and potato chips in bed. I drank every night, and I rarely drink, so this was odd of me but enormously fun. By my last night home alone, I was coming down with a bad cold, so I tried to heat up some soup on the stovetop. But I accidentally lit the wrong burner, and while I thought my soup was warming, I got distracted because the movie Mermaids - of all things - was on TV. So when the fire alarms began to go off with a vengeance I was confused, until I realized I'd accidentally been heating up, and then burning, old bacon grease in a leftover pan. Not my chicken noodle soup. The apartment smelled like a peculiar version of bacon-hell, my dog was crying and hiding in the corner, and the smoke was so thick I literally thought about crawling around so I wouldn't die of inhalation. I had to open every single window I have, put on every fan, and stand, in my underwear (of course), under the alarm flinging around a towel to make the noise stop.
By the end of that week I had a terrible sinus infection and had to miss two entire days of work. But lordy, was that a fun week.
This time around I'll try to be a real human adult. Two months of that kind of behavior would clearly put me in a casket, anyway.
My real plan is to use this time to prepare for graduate school. I start up an MFA in creative writing in January, on top of having a day job. So beginning on September 1st, my plan has been to hold myself accountable to what will be my grad school schedule: reading six books, and writing 30 pages of manuscript, per month. I'll start casually this month, reading whatever books move me and writing anything I like. Then I'll try to step it up, adding more focus to the mix, in October.
In honor of this, I spent Monday cleaning and organizing my office, so my writing space would be clear and welcoming. And on September 1st I began and finished my first book - a fun pick, Stephen King's Joyland. What an awesome feeling that is, and has always, been - to begin and finish a fun, breezy book in one languid, rainy day.
So, tonight. After work I will come home, walk the pup, and head to the library. I will pick out five more books, anything that moves me, anything that feels right. And I'll come home, try to remember to feed myself, and then settle into this newly organized, bright and friendly book-room of mine, to begin practicing for my own new life.
You can have adventures by leaving, by moving, by going somewhere new. And admittedly those are my favorite kind. But you can also have them at home, by living in a new way. And I'm genuinely excited for mine to begin.
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