"Alone" - in search of a definition

You know more than you think you know,
just as you know less than you want to know.
............Oscar Wilde

Alone is not a word that is simple to define. Nor is the condition/state of being. Sure it is, you say; no one else is in the room. That's not what I mean; I suppose I'm taking an existentialist approach. i.e., one can be alone in a room full of people. Since I'm being obtuse I'll take the long way around to explain and tell you a story. Picture, if you will, a little girl -- five or six years old; blond hair, chestnut eyes. Not a waif; more of a presence. She lives in a big city with her family: parents, grandparents, older brother, baby brother. She is passionately in love with her family although she feels, oddly, that she is on loan to them; that she does not come from them. (She'll suffer later for both these emotions.) Her mother is distant, being very close to her own mother and subconsciously wanting to be the little girl of the family herself. Her older brother is "the prince;" the first born son with biblical impact. Her baby brother is the baby after all. So our little girl is vaguely apart from the family.

A huge occasion: the end of WW II. The entire city pulsates with joy. She runs across the empty lots behind her home to greet her brother returning early from summer camp. They hug and race back to the house. And before adults of the family turn the corner to greet them both, her brother swings, smacks her across the face and levels her. The parental response is what did you do to deserve it? It begins with this and continues for the next 10+ years. Empty space is created around her; she steps back.

In all seasons, she runs to that house believing each time that it is truly home; safe haven. But there are challenges: the adult cousin of her father who corners her in the upstairs hallway and she has to fight him off; the stepbrother of her mother who attempts to bother her when she's sleeping on the living room sofa so he and his wife could have her bedroom while they visit. The mean kid from her religious school class who follows her home on the dark winter evenings and tries to assault her on the street. She goes to her parents who are ill-equipped to deal with any of this. What did you do? She steps further back.

She hides somewhere in her head; in her fantasies; in her imagination. She lives in her love for dance, and movies, and poetry. Not a good enough dancer to make a career, she's told. That poetry is obviously not yours -- what did you do?? She steps back further still.

Racing ahead. She marries young believing that her husband will be her best friend. Her true partner. But he is looking to be taken care of; and to protect his own chosen isolation. They inevitably part. What the hell did you do??

Don't hang up -- I know this reads like one huge kvetch! But really it's a street-map of sorts to understand a way of being. Our little girl, now a grown woman, creates camaraderie with her own children and within her artistic endeavors. When the children and the artistic endeavors move on, she steps back again and this time falls, like Alice down the rabbit hole, into a place that she doesn't recognize nor from which can she seemingly escape. Having lived in too many different places to establish community; having an internal sense of isolation (growing out of the events above and more) that prevents her from pressing into clubs or groups, etc., she can indeed be defined as alone. No -- please do NOT believe that she is a victim. From that first day when she was five or six years old she rejected that role. You can be sure that falling down the rabbit hole was not an accident. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Alone is not necessarily a bad thing. Not the greatest condition either, to tell the truth. But at the bottom of the rabbit hole, if you recall the tale, Alice goes among mad people. And probably doesn't inspire a sense of normalcy herself. "We're all mad here," says the Cheshire Cat. "I'm mad; you're mad." It's a fine madness; a sort of protection against the terminal loneliness that "alone" can cause. The moments of clarity when one realizes the lack of "remember that?" moments; "no one to call" moments; the absence of a daily witness to one's existence. But since our girl is filled with love of life; of being; creating; since our girl has dear friends in various parts of the world (though not available for a walk on the beach) who care so much that she's there -- since our girl is an eternal tourist and is surprised constantly by the small moments of each day -- she is one with the world. And if you asked our girl what the hardest thing is about being alone, she'd no doubt tell you that she misses almost most of all -- the dancing.