A Life of Solitude and the Fear of Being Alone
Several weeks ago, I faced a serious health scare that left me shaken. The emergency appointment and ultrasound were attended alone, as I reached out to my friends and sisters, only to find they were unavailable or otherwise occupied. All I needed was someone to hold my hand and offer a bit of moral support. But on a sweltering hot day, I sat alone in the hospital waiting room — a solitary figure among a sea of cosy couples. My only company was my Kindle, and I bounced off the walls with anxiety.
While the scare turned out to be nothing more than a false alarm, it served as a stark reminder of how isolated I felt. The realization that my friends weren’t there for me when it counted hit hard. As a childless, unmarried woman of 63, it’s difficult to admit how terrified I am of ending up alone and being eaten by cats.
Without the silent contract between parent and child — someone we look after and who can take care of us — loneliness weighs more heavily on me each day. The thought of spending my final years isolated or worse, going gaga and incontinent in a care home, is devastating.
Like many women, I had always expected to get married, have children, and maybe even live in a countryside house. It never happened, not by choice — I simply left it too late. Looking back, in my twenties and thirties, I was about as ready for marriage as I was for joining the Women’s Institute. I didn’t want my life mapped out for me.
Even when most of my friends were married or became mothers in my late thirties, I would shoot them pitying glances as they wiped off baby sick and tried to pacify a screaming infant. I was young, pretty with thick brown hair and full cheeks, and I revelled in my unconventional, free life. But who was I kidding? Myself, actually.
Age has caught up with me, and those full cheeks of my youth are sunken, the hair has thinned, and my lips are puckered. Ageing is not easy. Bit by bit, things I took for granted — men giving me a second glance, bouncing out of bed in the morning — started to dwindle, and I’ve had to learn to adapt to a new list of challenges.
A few years ago, I lost my hearing in one ear (it is idiopathic; they don’t know what caused it), and it has been hard to accept my new silent reality. I struggle to identify where any noise is coming from, and simply walking down the road makes me nervous and confused like an old woman. What will happen as I get frail and need help having a bath or even going to the loo? It feels particularly grim without a significant other.
Yes, I really want to meet someone and feel the cosiness of being in a couple. We all want to be loved, and feeling that passion can rekindle a long-lost libido. I am practically dating around the clock, but I’m not holding my breath this time. My old optimistic mantra of “I’ll find someone in the end” is no longer an inevitability, and I have to factor in more uncomfortable possibilities.
I work alone, live alone. I don’t know a soul in the block of flats where I live. Shopping is often done online, and the supermarket checkout is now a row of automated machines. I can go for weeks without speaking to anyone face to face.
So where does that leave someone like me? I never paid into a pension scheme, so I am now relying on the state to heat and eat. I’m also a victim of the single tax. Without a partner to share the financial burden, I cover everything — the bills, astronomical service charges, groceries, Netflix, holidays, and occasional treats such as meals with friends.
Friends talk of the new women-only co-housing developments that are springing up in London and beyond. Cheaper than living privately, you can rent or buy a flat. There is also a communal area, communal chores, and some shared meals. I would rather chew off my own arm than spend time in an Oestrogen Only Commune. Don’t get me wrong, I am fiercely pro-woman. I just don’t want to be a group or team player.
On the flip side, I don’t see myself as an old biddy, and I don’t want to get stuck in the “it’s all downhill from here” negativity. How we frame things often changes the outcome. My health wake-up call made me realize that life is not a dress rehearsal. Time is slipping away from me. I still want to have fun and fulfillment well into my dotage.
I doubt I will be reinventing myself and dyeing my hair orange or wearing dayglo dresses, but I want to explore my passions. Line dancing to country and western music in a hillbilly honky tonk in the American Deep South — why not? Not to mention a weekend stomping through mud and screaming my head off to some American folksy band I love. And in a nod to older age, we would sleep in a fancy yurt with good-quality pillows and apple-scented shower gel. A life away from the noise and chaos of the city — I live in London — is also up there on my to-do list.
I remember when I used to visit my father in Spain. We bobbed along nicely in comfortable companionship, each with a wide-screen telly in our room, and someone to chit-chat with at meal times. It dawned on me that instead of living on my own, why not with a family member? Someone you are familiar with, so you can get on with your own thing, without bothering with the niceties?
Sadly, my father died two years ago, but my sister and I often talk about the simple life somewhere in hot climes. Thanks to the Bank of Dad, a villa in Sicily is on the cards.
Who knows, maybe things will work out in the end? The important thing for me is to let go of “what ifs” and live for the moment. Last weekend I went to a party, laughed a bit too loudly, waved my arms around as I told a funny joke, and danced with a much younger man. Too much, maybe. But that fun, fuzzy feeling I came home with lasted a week. How’s that for ageing with attitude?