Solitary

There are two kinds of witches: the kind who practice in groups, in circles and covens (yes, covens, really), and those who practice by themselves, the solitaries. And if I asked for a show of hands of which sort you thought I would be--covener or solitary?--I'd be surprised if even a one of you raised your hand to guess I am a covener.

I'm not, of course. I'm a solitary. It shows, I know. The intraversion, the hermitishness, I know. And it suits me perfectly, being a solitary wiccan. I get to do my own thing my own way all by myself. I get to pretend that Silver Ravenwolf doesn't even exist, and that the entire cotton-candy-pink cast-a-spell-to-get-a-boyfriend shelf of the nearest bookstore is surely an illusion, a hallucination, and nothing connected with me.

My hobbies, too, are of the solitary sort. I read, I write, I do crafts, I blog, I work out at home because I can't get to a gym, I do a million and one things that revolve around me sitting on my butt on the couch talking to myself. (Or working out. Less sitting with that.) "Is that what Freya would say?" I ask the air. Or: "I need an acrylic stamp cleaner." Or: "Oh crap, I forgot to call the optometrist again." I'll know to be concerned if one day the TV cabinet answers me.

All the while, loneliness sits purring under the couch, a small fluffy cat. Cute, self-contained and solitary; it keeps me company, but in the background where I don't pay it much attention and it asks for even less. Am I missing anything? Yes, but no. I have Frances, of course; and she is excellent company when she's awake. Of course she doesn't stay awake, though often she would like to, and there is that pesky Thursday to Saturday period where she is not there at all. It is then that the sleeping kitty stretches up, and then down, leaps on to the couch to settle on my lap, paws needling my thighs. I scratch it behind the ears and we mope together, the fluffy cat and I. Am I missing anything? Maybe a little.

The cat is easily fed. There is housework to do and no one there to do it but me, and that keeps me busy for a while, sweeping and mopping and doing dishes and putting food away and cleaning the kitchen table and laundry and all the things that every adult gets to do. The cat will eat housework, if that's all there is. There are blog posts to write and books to read, and no incessant television on in the background to distract me, no guilt to feel over someone who is being neglected while I pencil my notes on green post-it tags and litter them all over my reading. The cat likes books, it will gobble them down. There is exercising. The cat will tolerate exercising if I force it. And oh, there is writing, real meaty writing, essays and stories and even a novel. Uninterrupted writing time, every day. Time to revel in words, roll around in them, wrap myself up in sentences and paragraphs, plots and narratives, like quilts. The cat loves writing. It would eat that every meal, if I let it.

This cat and I are still getting to know each other. I've never been alone enough to be lonely, before. I am by nature so solitary that it takes a good long stretch of solitude before it switches over into its conjoined twin, loneliness, and stares at me with sad eyes instead of merry ones. So sometimes I trip over it or step on its tail and it yowls at me, hisses and scratches; but that's ok. We're new to each other, and settling in. For instance, I can tell you that the cat really likes having the bed to itself, most of the time. The cat likes knowing that it never needs to rearrange the dishes in the dishwasher (mostly because I don't have one), and that my regular shirts will never be left to rot because they were assumed to be delicates, nor my knit shirts shrunken in the dryer. The cat is very happy not to have to pay for cable, and not to have a largeish collection of plastic bags accumulating uselessly under the sink. The cat really, really likes knowing that if it gets woken up at some ungodly hour, it can switch the nightstand lamp on and read in bed for a while. As I said, it doesn't ask for much. It is generally a pretty happy cat. It sleeps under the couch, and purrs.

I agreed to take this cat in August, when I moved. (Doesn't this cat need a name? Is its namelessness beginning to grate at you?) I committed to it back in March, when I told Erik I was leaving. I promised it two years.

Two years, I thought, would be the minimum required for me to learn about it, and for it to learn about me. I haven't ever really lived on my own. I had roommates in university, and when I graduated I married Erik almost right away. He had a job that involved shiftwork so I spent plenty of time by myself, but he was always coming back, and that's different. That was temporary and with a known end date. And I wonder now with the wisdom of hindsight if part of what got me into trouble way back when was a desire to avoid loneliness, and I jumped when I should have held back.

In any case, I can't make that mistake now. If nothing else, then for Frances's sake I need to be positively, absolutely, 100% certain that whatever new change I make to her living situation, especially if it involves an adult male who is not her father, is completely and unquestionably in her best interests, or at least defensible and not likely to cause my resilient and brave girl to utterly collapse. Two years, I reasoned, would be enough. Enough to learn myself. Enough to be certain that if I did leap again, it would not be because I am afraid of single motherhood, or of loneliness. Enough to question myself relentlessly about my motives and desires and to know that what I am giving myself to is not going to destroy me again. Two years, I promised it. March 2009. At least.

And that cat, I tell you, it acts like it owns the place. Two years! it purrs knowingly. You're stuck with me. I can shred the curtains and the couch and puke hairballs all over the place, and what are you going to do about it? You promised me two years.

At times I think I might have been a little hasty, and I should turf the ungrateful little bugger now. Intellectually I know I was right. "To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet," the cat says smugly. Charles Colton said that. And it's true. My heart and I have some catching up to do, no matter how often I wish it, too, would just blink out like a snuffed candle. That's why I gave the cat two years, after all.

But then there are times when I am too tired for the housework, the reading, the blogging, the working out, the crafts, the writing; too tired to feed the cat and give it what it's asking for. I want there to be someone to say "No that's ok, I'll do the dishes tonight, you sit down." Or: "How was your day?" Or: "I'm going to the store for milk, should I pick up anything?" Or: "You look nice today." And it's not like I can pick any random fellow off the street and plug him into that role and expect it to work any better than it did the last time, but holy hell, the temptation is there; and at those times, my cute little fluffy cat disappears. It expands and takes on Aslan's dimensions, only mean; a fierce and hungry lion larger than a horse; and then it eats me alive. When it is late and I am alone and tired and don't have the energy to feed it, it eats me instead.

"Two years," it says, licking its lips; and then I don't think I can do this.

"You promised," it says. "I'm not going anywhere." And then I think that anything else must be better.

"'Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for,'" it says. "Dag Hammarskjold." And then it shrinks a little. And I, feeling uncomfortably like a handful of ground meat, regard it.

Cat: Ah, that one got you. I knew it would.

Andrea: Damn you.

Cat: You are a sucker for a challenge. Ha. Now you're going to try to turn this to some account.

Andrea: (sighs)

Cat: So? Can you take this?

It is generally about then that I do the dishes, wipe the crumbs off the counter. I come back to the couch to read a bit before bed, and a small furry cat buts its hot forehead against my elbow and purrs. I scratch it behind the ears.

Posted by Andrea at January 2, 2008 9:02 AM under Decision 2007 , Me , Single Momming

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