by Sean Demory
"I LIVE ALONE."
to live in a
rat waren
Those words tend to ring hushed, almost horrified silence in most social situations. Single living is seen as a slightly unpleasant aberration, one of those things that people talk about but never actually do. It is invariably a sign that one has an inability to cope, that one does not get along with others.
I have lived alone for two and a half years and have seen it happen. Conversation moves to housing stories and dealing with other people's lives. As it comes to me, I say those fatal words:
"Roommates? No, no roommates...LIvie alone."
The topic shifts clumsily elsewhere, but eventually someone asks me about prices for single apartments, utilities and grocery bills. Then they move on like a car shopper pricing a fire-engineered convertible before settling down to a comfortable station wagon.
Almost three years ago, I simply wanted to make the biggest leap possible. I knew that at some point, I would have to live alone as a "real person," and I felt that living alone in college would be a chance to grow, to become something different than the person I was.
One month into my experience, I learned some important lessons. I learned not to cringe at the price of single apartments. I learned not to cringe at the fact that multiperson dwellings tended to be first on the landlord's list for repairs, and I began to fix things myself.
I saw the move from residence hall to single apartment as a strange rebirth.
I learned not to pass the buck, because I found that I was the only person around to keep my apartment from becoming actively squalid. I was the only
person to blame when it did, for no one else would appear and pick up my slack. I slowly began to realize the truth in the maxims my parents had flung at me during the years I had lived at home.
I would visit friends living in groups and try to hide my horror; as far as I could see, anyone living with more than one person was doomed to live in a rat warren of internal strife and unpaid bills. I never had to worry about screaming fights in my living room, never had to worry about people taking my things without my permission. My life was ordered, immutable and focused, like a perfect, crystalline rose.
When most people think of living alone, they smile smugly and talk about Bob Berdella and Jeffrey Dahmer. They think of the image of a 40-year-old bachelor watching Love Con-nection in unwashed clothes. They think of the spinster whose biggest thrills in life are her Friday night dinner at Furr's Cafeteria and her vast collection of porcelain figurines. These people all are victims of solitude, I am told.
Admittedly, loneliness is a peril but not a major one. I am more social than many of my group-dwelling friends. People do not seem to realize that living alone and being lonely are not necessarily connected and that one can be lonely just as easily with seven people around as with none.
Living alone has taught me to be less reliant on others and let me learn not to place more dependence or faith in others than I am willing or able to place in myself. That is something that will serve me longer than learning to pay bills on time or how to replace tile.
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Sean Demory is a Manhattan senior. He has been published in Hanging Loose.
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January 1998 The Hill
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