is “alone” a curse word?

Life is funny.

(And by funny I probably mean about one thousand other words but funny works too so let’s just stick with that one word.)

I had this experience a week or more ago.

Life handed me about two hours, a sold out movie to which I had received two free tickets and alone time as my daughter, who was to attend said movie with me, had a sick husband to tend to.

So what do you do with two hours, a movie you can no longer watch, an already planned childcare arrangement and nothing that has to be accomplished?

You go into a nearby Barnes & Noble and you buy a blank notebook and a copy of a book you’ve been wanting to read.

Because ….. Opportunity.

You scrounge through your Sean Penn bag and cannot believe that you cannot locate one single solitary pen in the beautiful blue and white striped lined innards of your bag.

But then you do find one pen and you legitimately rejoice.

Then you waltz right into PF Chang’s with your bag and your book and your self and you order an entire sharing-size lettuce wraps appetizer to NOT share and you just write down words because words are so pretty.

Eating Alone is another “funny” thing about life.  

People look at you.

The waitress asks, “Is it just you?”

Yep.  It’s just me.

Hey guys.  I don’t mind being alone.

It is surreal really. To sit and stare at All The Faces and to hear All The Sounds.

To be quiet.  To watch and to bear witness to so many segmented stories, so much fractured humanity.

To grow comfortable with Being Alone.

We are so afraid of Being Alone.  As if it is a curse.

Or worse.

A contagious disease.

Can you catch my aloneness?  Will I infect you?

And we struggle to fill that void in a desperate hamster-in-a-ball kind of way.

Our first line of defense?

The Phone.

We try to connect all pseudo-like to our high school friend whose face we haven’t physically seen since algebra class.  We scan other people’s vacation photos and children’s birthday parties without even knowing if we were ever In Real Life friends with the walker on the beach or the one holding the fruity beverage.

Like if we are on our phone in a restaurant even though we are seated at a table by  ourselves then maybe our announcement to the world will be: I’ve got friends.  I choose to be alone.  I’m connected.  It’s fine.

You know what?  I don’t even care.  

I don’t have a message to the people who probably are not even watching me in a restaurant eat my lettuce wraps alone on a weeknight.

What is there to say?  What is there to broadcast?

Then again – maybe this, I guess, is my message, after all:

I enjoyed my quiet dinner.  This book is an interesting one.  The lettuce wraps were so good and I ate too much of them and now my stomach kind of hurts.