I do not have a rule book or playbook on being alone. All I can say is that for the majority of the last year and a half, I have done things alone. Maybe I should change that to “by myself” instead of “alone,” but my lived experience screams the word “alone,” and so that is what I will call it.
Some have actually called me a super-mom. Each time it happens, I respond instantly with one single laugh. I put my eyes down and shake my head. Have you ever been so exhausted from being yourself that you crave just one day of not having to hold up the world? I am far from a super-mom or an angel, but I have yet to find any resemblance to a calm and stable life. Ask anyone facing challenges beyond what they could imagine if they are proud of their resilience. I would claim we would all stand tall and say we are proud of what we have faced, but the consequences can be unbearable.
When trauma enters (and for this piece, I am calling it ‘aloneness’), it does not knock. It asks no permission or does it seek consent. In some situations, you can foreshadow its arrival. You and your partner argue daily. You may cry yourself to sleep, knowing that things won’t change in the morning. A medical evaluation finally comes back with a diagnosis. You start fearing calls from your child’s school – worrying that another suspension means another unpaid day you must take. You tell the story to nurses, receptionists, and doctors. You tell it over and over again. All of these scenarios build over time. Although you become accustomed to chaos, it does not shield you from the toll each of them takes.
The opposite can also occur. Aloneness can break your spirit in a moment -not with a knock at the door but with a forced entry. It’s calling the emergency line for your child. It is crying to a stranger on the other line that you are alone and the child you have raised is having a mental health crisis. You have dreaded that call. You find yourself dropping to your knees on the driveway and watching the unfathomable happen in front of your eyes. It’s seeing that child you have raised being surrounded by those in uniform explaining why they did what they did. Are the sirens screaming, or are your husband’s tires against the curb? You can be alone and still surrounded by so many people. They leave just as quickly as they come and leave the spirit of who you were as a mother like a ghost forever slumped on her knees on the concrete.
Aloneness captures you in real-time. It settles in like an unwanted houseguest, draining you of every resource, thought, desire, and relationship.
To keep my family together, my family had to separate. In that separation, the aloneness deepened with address changes and moving boxes. It dug gashes in my marriage and created an uneven path for my six-year-old to maneuver. We are single-parenting. We are co-parenting in different houses. We are not divorced yet void of a breathing husband and a thriving wife. My aloneness swelled to a breaking point as I moved my child of only eight years into the hands, hearts, and buildings of those twelve hours away.
Aloneness is raising your son over emails. It’s being a mother on FaceTime, on Messenger, in text, and by video. It is praying that the right decisions were made. It’s grasping for your estranged husband’s hand and weeping. It’s getting on your return plane without your son when he sat next to you on the flight there.
It could be spelled out for me or blaring from a horn. I know the definition of aloneness. I am aware that the definition calls it a choice. Every choice I have made for my children – to keep them safe, to educate them, to find the best medical care – has left me feeling so very alone. It’s a choice I have made because I have no other choice.
The art of being alone can also make others around you become very uncomfortable, especially if you are living authentically in it. Yes, I have been called super-mom, but I have also been asked if I have thought of how much worse it could be. It is as if the tired and exhausted mom has never thought of just how much worse it could be. Gratitude missed the boat here, right? Aloneness can be all and the ‘and.’ I feel gratitude in my bones just as much as I feel the grief. The art of it is allowing it all to be true.
I refuse to compare stories of who hurt the worst, but maybe one part of the unwritten playbook of being alone should just be this: admit it. Admit you are hurting. Admit it for what it is. That’s all.
And, girl? You can figure out the rest tomorrow.
We always do.
