Detachment

In my fourth decade, there have been interesting lessons of and for the self.

I now know that being alone does not mean I need to be isolated. It is okay and well within the rules of aloneness to share company with someone - be they in the same room or virtually. It is also okay not to.

I am still a little amazed that I actually now enjoy my own company more than I can remember in recent memory. While I was, as a child, a loner, come teenagehood I craved company. Being alone became a terrifying prospect. I didn't know what to do with myself, beyond killing time until the next person came along to fill the void.

Now, with Tigger in my life, and the circumstances of our un-togetherness, I have discovered that there are many periods of time when I actually do not want her around. When she goes away, I meld to my home or my surroundings better, senses both calmer and heightened. I feel lighter and happier with myself.

I have often now questioned what this means. Do I not love her? Or do I simply just not love her enough?

Or, do I think I do not love her because loving, all this while to me, has meant constant togetherness, without which love becomes too painful to bear?

In the past, I would not have tolerated the absences that I now face. Even now, I wonder how this will all hold together. This lack of clear finish lines to the absence, the ever-changing goal posts of when we will finally share a real home together, where responsibilities are shouldered in halves and not wholes.

But speaking to a friend from across the world, and watching my sister periodically mourn her absent husband have made me wonder whether loving needs rules after all. Today, jobs and financial practicalities that beset the price of living mean loving sometimes needs to happen in two places. Over space and time. Without the ability to reach out and physically touch each other.

Funny how technology in a way, has played a role in reviving the old-fashioned romance of lovers enduring the trials of long separations. While Skype and mobile phones mean we can now be closer than ever to people far away, it has also meant couples now tolerate the notion of being apart more. It's okay, because we can Skype every day.

But is it really? What has happened to the notion of going through the drudgery of daily life side by side? The changing of diapers, cooking of meals, bathing of dogs and shopping of groceries in each other's company, bitching about each other's bosses at a communal kitchen table over a short-cooked dinner - when does the absence of these little things begin to erode the sense of a shared and unified life?

I am staying tuned for answers. All in good time, I presume. After all, there is nothing else or little choice left but to let everything run its course.