It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks after I’d first moved into the Boston condo. Night had fallen sooner than expected and as I rounded the corner onto Braddock Park I realized that my windows were one of the few that remained dark.
Because no one was there.
Dried leaves rustled beneath my feet as I approached the row of brownstones. Looking up at my darkened windows, I knew instinctually at that moment that I couldn’t do in to an empty room. Not right then. Something in me understood that if I went in then, that space would be tainted with loneliness, marred by the seemingly-insurmountable sadness and sorrow I suddenly felt. Some inner-sanctum of self-preservation surfaced, and I stopped abruptly mid-stride.
Once in a while, the body leads the mind, the way a forced smile settles some minor bit of ease into a tense situation, and intuitively I let the body lead. Turning around, my physical self knew it couldn’t face the empty rooms, and I walked back the way I’d just come. Heading toward the Copley Place mall, to where there was light, and warmth, and people. It didn’t matter that they were strangers, only that I wasn’t entirely alone. And it made me feel a little less lonely.
That’s not something I ever admitted until now. Even in all the ensuing years where no night was ever spent alone, I never wanted to admit how lonely I once was. It wasn’t shame (I always took pride and comfort in solitude) and it wasn’t embarrassment – it was the absolute refusal of myself to admit to loneliness at the time, because I understood on some level that to admit it would make it real, and that might destroy me.
Carrying that fear with me through the years has been, I see now, an unnecessary burden – and I lay it down here at last as I put the words onto paper, exorcizing another demon after half a century of being haunted. Letting the ghosts go is an integral part of growing up – and even at this ancient age of fifty, there is still more growing up to do. Happily, the heart is more settled now, and part of that has come about with a home in Boston, where once I felt lonely… until I didn’t – and having that home in that favored city is its own charm against loneliness.
