Learning to live alone

The first 40 odd years of my life I lived with crowds — husbands, children, maids, houseboys, drivers, gardeners, almost everyone under the sun. Then through twisted turns of fate my daughter and I were living in San Francisco, in a small flat in Millbrae and we were commuting to school and work.

Another more or less cruel twist and we found ourselves housesitting for close friends who were going home to the Philippines for some months. Their big house was in Hillsbrough, where a lot of very rich people lived. It had a large master’s bedroom with all glass windows along one wall and a glass door that led to a tiny deck with stairs that went down to the garden. Hillsborough was a place for people with cars and we didn’t have a car then because none of us could drive.  But we made arrangements with one of my daughter’s friends, who would pick us up and take us to the Bart station.

Then my daughter decided to come home on vacation so I had no choice but to live there alone.

The homes in Hillsborough were far from each other so you did not have to worry about someone peeping through your window. But that was my nightmare.  At night I would imagine a drunk pressing his entire body against the bedroom’s glass door, which was directly in front of the bed, demanding to be let in.  I would hear rustling in the bushes the outside my bedroom window in the middle of the night.  Raccoons rummaging for food, but they scared me nonetheless.

When I woke up in the morning I would see the turrets of a massive home, two blocks down, which people referred to as the castle, because it looked like a castle.  Three teen-aged girls were raped and murdered there. That would give me the creeps. But I had to live there. I had no choice. I committed to stay and watch the house thinking my daughter would be with me. A few months and everybody would be back. I had to learn how to live alone. Sometimes at night I would take a hot tub bath in the gorgeous bathroom and drink a couple of shots of vodka on the rocks to calm me, not knowing that was a dangerous thing to do.

Eventually everyone returned and we moved into a small apartment  with a loft bedroom. But the housesitting experience taught me to live alone. I don’t remember how long I stayed in Hillsborough, maybe for three or four months.  Nobody came to molest me or to try to murder me. The neighborhood was very quiet and really safe or maybe I was just lucky. I learned to enjoy having a life entirely my own.

When you live alone you live the way you want to. Do I want to make my bed?  If I want to, I will. If I don’t want to, I won’t. Sometimes I only half make it up so I can slip easily into it when I sleep at night. Nobody complains. No one notices. It’s my bed in my room in my house.  What time do I want to eat?  It’s only 10:30 a.m. but I’m so hungry.  I eat lunch at eleven. Nobody comments. Nobody complains. Yes, those are the two greatest things about living alone. One, you can do anything you want, when and where you want and two, nobody complains.  To me, that’s the lap of luxury.

When I returned to the Philippines I lived alone for a short while in one of the Makati condominiums close enough to my office so I could walk to work.  But there I slept with a kitchen knife beside my bed just in case I needed to defend myself from an intruder. None came. Then the whole family returned and we all lived together for a while until the children were all married and gone and now I live alone again.

Now I’m no longer afraid. But I always look for a place where I will be safe.  That’s very important if you live alone. I send my clothes to the laundry and spend less than the salary of a laundrywoman, plus the water and electricity she would spend washing and ironing, plus the multiple loans she will surely ask for. I have turned the maid’s room into a library of most of my papers that need to be sorted out.

True, sometimes I get lonely.  I long for someone to laugh with. That’s what I miss most — laughter. But I play computer solitaire or watch TV and the loneliness passes quickly. When I wake up the next day, I am fresh again, smiling again, happy again.  I absolutely love living alone. I think it’s the most intelligent thing I have ever done.

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