As a busy mom, I am pretty good at complaining. One complaint I have perfected: “All I want is to be completely alone, do whatever I want when I want, without anyone asking me for anything.” Sound familiar?
But it turns out that when the rubber hits the road, it is really hard to be alone. In fact, it is uncomfortable and not at all fun for the first few hours.
Why is it that the thing we say we crave is so hard? I think that we could make time alone happen, moms, if we REALLY wanted to. But maybe we don’t REALLY want to. Because being alone is hard when you are used to being needed.
Years ago, after nursing my husband through a kidney stone and a 3 year-old through a bad cold all while tending an infant, I was exhausted. My husband arranged a decent hotel room across town and for 14 hours I was allowed to sleep in a big bed as long as I wanted. It was a dream.
But I blew it. I called my mom five times until she finally told me to hang up. “Being alone is hard, isn’t it?” Is it? I ended up getting sucked into some daytime movie where Leonardo DiCaprio’s wife drowned her children (it still haunts me), not doing anything that filled my heart and sleeping fitfully between nightmares. I felt frustrated and not recharged.
Then, when I went to New York City last fall and spent a night alone in the city, I was surprised. I lived in London and Washington, D.C. alone. When had I become so terrible at being alone? WHY was I so terrible at being alone?
Does being alone take practice? I decided to experiment.
This past summer my parents went out of town for an extended period of time and I asked if I could stay at their house for a weekend. The weekend coincided with my high school’s 20-year reunion.
Truthfully, it almost didn’t happen. I went from taking the family, to taking the husband, to not going, and then back around and forwards and up again. It was dizzying and I couldn’t seem to make a decision. Deep down, I knew this would be uncomfortable.
I started my Friday by taking an oceanside yoga class before I left town.
After class, something weird happened.
I felt refilled, recharged at first. But as I rolled my mat and slipped on my flip flops, I went back to stress mode. I thought of all the things I should be doing and my chores and my lists. Errands. Tasks. Calls. Work.
You see, everyday I operate like I am teaching a course on how to be efficient. There isn’t a minute that goes by where I am not squeezing everything I can out of it. If there was competitive time management, I’d win (it is why I love my Bullet Journal so).
Even though I had nowhere I needed to be, nobody relying on me, and nothing to do, I was so accustomed to feeling the polar opposite that I acted that way.
Busy had become habit.
Feeling my heart rate accelerate out of control, I walked across the street, got a fatty muffin and read a book I had long been meaning to dive into. I was trying to break habits.
Unlearning the habit of being busy was very hard. I had grown into and then mastered it over the past seven years; relaxing into a non-scheduled life was not easy.
Eventually, I drove to my parents’ house and arrived late on Friday. The next morning I woke up confused. The place was quiet. My first thought was “deathly” quiet. But what, really, was dying? The Allison that was beholden to a checklist? If so, God rest her soul.
I found my way to my parents’ Lake dock and kayak. I love to paddle and being on the water brings me balance.
It was such a bizarre sensation. Out on the water, I kept checking my watch. “I must be back by lunchtime!” “Oh my, it is already 11:45 and lunch is at noon!” “I better start paddling back, I hope I didn’t waste too much time!”
What madness is this!? It was ME ALONE ON THE WATER. Who said I had to eat lunch at noon? Hell, who said I needed to eat lunch at all?
Without two young children who get hangry at 12:01, I was free to do whatever I wanted. I boldly paddled past the dock and wasn’t off the water for hours. I was learning. I was rediscovering freedom and a little of myself.
I won’t say the weekend was perfect. As much as I love my high school friends, I felt somewhat irritated at being called away from myself for an event (although, of course, I was glad I went). There also wasn’t much time to hang out with myself – one full day. I had no time to write. Or, rather, I made no time between the kayaking and Lakeside yoga.
I know my generation and the one behind me are judged for saying we need to unplug and disconnect. We spend money on solitary vacations and created the term “staycation.”
I have heard the older generation tell us we are too preoccupied with ourselves. Life is hard work, they say, and the benefit of hard work is a good, comfortable life. They insinuate that perhaps if we never had a good, comfortable life, if it wasn’t given to us by them, if we had had to work for it, we wouldn’t be so wrapped up in our own heads. We are self-centered and self-absorbed because we grew up privileged.
But that’s not fair, nor is it the whole story.
My generation is parenting away from family and support. We are working multiple jobs many hours a day. Schools that have had their budgets cut require heavy parental involvement from parents that are wiped out. And school success matters because our children must go to college to get good jobs. Employers don’t expect us to stamp a time card, they expect us to respond to their email right away. People don’t understand why we don’t answer our cell phones when they call or answer their texts right away. Far-flung relatives expect us to post to Facebook so they can keep up with us because “isn’t technology wonderful?”
Sundays aren’t for porch sitting or pursuing hobbies, it is a day to do cook and prepare all the meals for the week and plow through laundry.
America runs fast. And young parents are just trying to keep up while we blindly forge a new path through this century. We are working hard for our good, comfortable lives, but hard work looks different now. We don’t pickle vegetables to get ready for the winter; we upload photos to blogs so grandparents can keep in touch and we make time to Facetime between school pick up and dinner pick up.
Taking time alone, even if it was only two short nights, meant a lot. I don’t regret being a parent and I never feel like the burden is soul-crushing. I think hard work is worth it.
But I do miss myself sometimes. The world moves fast and between the dings and Likes and emails, I can hardly hear myself. In the deathly quiet, I learned to let the time management competitor die…at least for the weekend.
BOLD: (defined)
not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff; courageous and daring; not hesitating to break the rules of propriety; necessitating courage and daring; challenging; beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action; imaginative
THE BOLD LIFE CHALLENGE:
I designed this challenge to push myself outside of my comfort zone. Adventure doesn’t have to be overseas, it can be in our own backyards.
I wanted to force myself to try new things, to learn to embrace my life, to take a situation where I was feeling lonely and force a new perspective. There is way too much fun, adventure, laughter and good people in the world for me to feel sad.
There is only one goal to this challenge: to live life BOLDLY. To live with courage, imagination, and to live outside conventional action. It is here life expands.