Live Alone in a Paradise That Makes Me Think of Two
November 2022
I adore solitude. Not all the time, but being by myself whether in my own domestic sanctuary or even better, out in nature, is one of my favorite things and has been for much of my adult existence. Kara was the same. I would venture to say that our preferred states of being, were either alone or alone together. And we’d both be hardpressed to rank them in order of preference.
That’s one of the reasons that our little home off-the-grid was so perfect for us. The closest city, Olympia, was a 35-minute drive through the woods if we wanted to “people” or have a nice dinner out, etc. Close enough, but also far enough away. When I moved briefly into my mother’s one-bedroom apartment in Beaverton, essentially the day of the fire, it was complete sensory overload for me. Her apartment complex was directly on a major thoroughfare of the Portland suburb, and it was jarring, to say the least.
Shortly thereafter I moved into a temporary place in the small coastal town of Wheeler and only drove into Beaverton on Sunday afternoons to stay at mom’s place and pick up a couple of quick caregiver shifts. The initial hope was that I would be able to slowly reintegrate into the city by the time we got to the top of the 2-bedroom, ground-floor waitlist at her place. But as the months progressed, it became more and more evident that not only was the gradual reestablishment not happening, my need for quiet and time spent alone in nature was becoming ever more pronounced.
So I reprioritized my parameters for a living space and was extremely lucky to find a spot on the coast just down the road from Wheeler that provided everything I needed and then some. It did feel a little strange though - a nearly 50-year-old man moving into an above-garage flat with one car-load of belongings that included no hangers, no furniture, and an air mattress. And it might have been slightly embarrassing were it not for the circumstances that produced the situation. Nonetheless, I was far from embarrassed. I was overjoyed to call the new space home.
It is in some ways a bachelorized facsimile of where Kara and I lived. Or the best one I could manage, anyway. A little less remote but more conducive to a solo existence untethered to responsibility. Closer to amenities, yet there is still peace, quiet, and nature all around me. That’s the good shit.
But being alone in a place such as this is currently the ultimate double-edged sword. I find myself in a bizarre purgatory of needing or being consumed by aloneness. I desperately require the seclusion and cocoon-like comfort of a relatively remote dwelling. However, if I’m having a bad day or feeling despondent in any way, it is a searing forsakenness. And there doesn’t seem to be much of an in-between.
Ironically, living completely alone in a new paradise is perhaps an even more difficult adjustment than just being surrounded by traffic and assholes again. But I’m playing the long game here. While I’m finding myself and my way forward, there are a great number of paths that I can walk and people out there within texting, calling, or driving distance if I need them. So I should be fine in the interim. The things that I love about this place, I will covet evermore. And the things that cause it to sting currently, I’m confident I can outwait.