astonishment

For as long as I can remember, I’ve nursed a fear of being abandoned. I’ve feared being left in every guise - being left out, being left behind, being left hanging. And while I didn’t marry and have children in order to make sure I would never be abandoned, having a family did mean that the chances of sleeping alone in our house were slim. Of course family life, by its nature, fluctuates. Nothing in it stays the same for long. And yet even when my husband travelled, and my kids disappeared on trips, I was never at home on my own for longer than a few days.

Today I find myself living all on my own, in our family house. And it’s the most incredible feeling. Here I am, on an island at the bottom of a continent, with my ex-husband and kids all in different countries. Admittedly my son will be back in a few weeks, and I have plans to visit my daughter. But right now I’m living on my own with the family dog. And it feels astonishing.

Astonishment is a private feeling. Like the feeling of deja vous, no-one else can feel astonishment for us. As a feeling, it’s as hard to share as it is to describe. So much of what happens to us in life never reaches consciousness. And it’s this everything that lies beneath the surface of awareness that fuels our astonishment when taken by surprise.

Was it my therapist, a few decades ago, who first put into words my fear of being abandoned? And did I, back then, question it? Because now that I’m living my greatest fear - as fate is wont to have it - I find that I’m pretty happy living on my own. I wouldn’t say that I prefer it. But it is a welcome break from complex interpersonal goings on. I still don’t want to be left out, left behind or left hanging. But it turns out that I quite like being abandoned. I like that I’m the only one in my family to be living in the city that we made a tree-change to 13 years ago. The irony of it feels sweet.

My astonishment goes further - and deeper - than geography. I have spent the last 10 days parked in front of my laptop, sitting at the kitchen table. I haven’t been parked here permanently. I’ve been in and out of the house for errands and dog walks and yoga teaching. However when I do come back into the kitchen, my glass of water, manuscript and laptop are in exactly the same place on the table as when I left them. The room that when my family was at home I avoided working in, for fear of being interrupted and cajoled into doing other things, I can now ensconce myself in, keeping this one room warm in our big old house by closing both doors - a small impossibility when my kids are about.

The house is quiet. Still, it doesn’t have to be quiet. I can play music, knowing that neither of my kids will burst into the kitchen with a disapproving frown and turn my speaker down or off. (So far my dog hasn’t complained.)

I can eat what I like, when I like. When I open the fridge door before dinner, I don’t have a list in my mind of ingredients that someone or other in the house doesn’t like. I can cook with chilli. I can cook with garlic and chilli. And coriander. I can buy expensive mushrooms at the market and eat them all myself. I can have nothing in the house for dinner and for it not matter one bit. I can invite friends for a meal and not have to do a little dance with whomever in my family happens to be around for dinner that night.

I can meet a deadline that I never ever would have been able to meet when my family was around. I can avoid cooking for five nights straight by defrosting food stashed in the freezer - and serve way too much for one person on one plate. I can become so addicted to watching Succession that it becomes my reward after a long day, and be repeatedly astonished by how terrifyingly good it is. (And yes, it has increased my swearing.) And sweetest of all, I can enjoy having my own bathroom.

It may be that the downside of being abandoned - or is it liberated? - will come back to bite me later on. I might fall down the stairs or put a spade through my foot and be unable to drive and teach yoga. I might run down my money and have to start a boarding house. My dog might eat something truly diabolical on the beach after which I’ll really have to live alone.

But for now being abandoned suits me well. ‘The truth’, wrote David Foster-Wallace, ‘will set you free. But not before it has done with you’. Maybe I had to fear being abandoned, for as much and as long as I did, before I could touch the astonishment that lay on the other side of it.