I read the saddest thing the other day. I’ve been doing a little research about the single life of late, rather than indulging myself in my own rambling nonsense. Clare Payne’s insightful book One: Valuing the single life, Jane Mathew’s practical The Art of Living Alone and Loving It, and going back to Hugh Mackay’s Australia Reimagined to see what one of Australia’s best social researchers had to say about the power of one.
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I can’t remember where I read what I’m about to reveal, it wasn’t in one of those books, probably on some Google search late at night, on some website written by some other loner.
This pearl of wisdom suggested that if you missed holding hands with someone - and I do - then you should hold your own hand.
Oh god, is that what my life has become? Could there be anything sadder?
A while ago I was at the Australian War Memorial for work and stuck around to watch the Last Post ceremony which is held every afternoon.
While the ceremony was going on I was standing behind an elderly couple and when the bugler started playing, the man reached down and held his wife's hand.
I posted on social media about the simple gesture. How for the rest of the ceremony they linked fingers, rubbing each other's palms, as he stood behind her, his belly pressing into her back, her leaning against him occasionally. I started to cry. Not because the Last Post is one of the saddest pieces of music ever written but because I wondered whether I would ever find someone to hold my hand again.
Close to 130 of my lovely friends liked my post, with 56 comments, but none of that mattered. What mattered was the connection of these two strangers connected with a lot of people.
And I miss that connection. A hand held out to help me over a rock on a bushwalk, fingers entwined above our heads while we’re making love, hands on a lap during a long drive, just touching during an afternoon on the couch while the footy’s on.
Touching myself, if you know what I mean, isn’t quite the same thing.
But then someone started flicking the lights, metaphorically speaking, to indicate the end of my pity party. And that someone was me.
I guess I do have to hold my own hand because the only person to help me up out of this place I’m in at the moment is me.
It’s a place where I’m reading Mathew’s book and she’s reminding me to start Pinterest boards and take long baths and remember colour when it comes to decorating my home and I’m thinking is the life of a single person really that sad? Do we have to be urged to find a health mantra, to join a dance class. Do we?
Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of takeaways from Mathew’s book and I thoroughly enjoyed our chat and plan to catch up when she’s in town for the Canberra Writer’s Festival. But is single life really that sad?
And then I catch myself drinking too much on a Tuesday. Or downloading Tinder for the 542nd time, then deleting it before the app has even fully formed. Or looking at my kitchen floor and thinking why should I even bother mopping it because I’m the only one looking at it. Or filling myself with self-doubt, believing all the naysayers who say the reason I’m still single is because I’m actually a horrible person. And I think yes, this single life is terrible and I am miserable and I am that horrible person. And I hate it all.
That’s the place I get trapped in at times.
People who aren’t alone aren’t always lonely, all the research tells me again, and again. But sometimes we are, so terribly lonely, and it’s okay for us to admit that.
But it’s what we do next that matters. If you find yourself curled up in the foetal position on your bathroom floor, and I have, get up. That’s the only advice I have.
Reach out your own hand and pull yourself up off that floor. I guess the saddest thing is not that you have to hold your own hand, but that you might not have the courage to take it and get up.
