I walk alone

There’s a certain romance to travelling alone. The nearly absolute freedom of having no schedule, no one depending on you, nowhere to go but where your wandering feet take you—it’s exhilarating. It’s the freedom of the cowboy, the pirate, the high eagle. The hart, he loves the high wood, said Mother Goose, and that lone stag on a mountainside has been envied by domesticated men through the centuries.

But, mostly, being alone sucks.

I view the relentless hours with a dread unknown elsewhere in my life. To have nothing to do terrifies me. So I fill my lonely days with ambitious regimen: two hour workout while listening to Half the Sky, dinner and shower with music playing, Skype, read with music playing, read in bed, keep reading long past a reasonable bedtime until I finally, reluctantly, turn off the lights and face the agonized, empty silence. Wake up, turn music on and go to work where thankfully there are other people. Linger at work. Drive home listening to RAI Radio 3. Will that help me learn Italian? I worry about this.

Sure, lots of people live alone. I just don’t know how they do it.

I eat six or seven of the same foods over and over again. German vanilla yoghurt (or is it Swiss?), PB&J, cheese sandwiches with lettuce from the Veneto, Danish eggs, chips and salsa, Mediterranean oranges. I’ve tried weird experiments with chili and steam-bag broccoli and cheese. Neither broccoli nor black beans belong in chili, I have learned. Boxed Near East couscous is really easy to make and is tasty with chili and broccoli. Oranges, plus orange juice, plus coffee, plus chili and broccoli and black beans equals really bad gas.

I didn’t do dishes again tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Eventually I’ll run out of cups, though I did just buy three more.

I’ve been apart from Julie and Aryn before. My two deployments were much longer than this separation will end up being, but on the ship you can’t wait to get to bed. You’re never, ever alone. The two minutes per day when you can stare at the horizon without someone talking to you or needing you or demanding something from you are some of the few things keeping you going. Bed, on the ship, is the only place you get to be alone, and you hardly ever spend a reasonable (or even healthy) amount of time there. But the growing madness is familiar.

I think I’m sleeping less than normal, now. And my sleep is troubled.

I went into Naples last weekend alone. It takes one hour and twenty minutes to drive to JFC, park and hop on the metro and arrive downtown at the Archeological museum. Most of the excavated relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum are there, and it’s fascinating. Thousands of years of history and art stand silently and stare through me. I do not exist.

I can try harder to be social. I can give the growing list of friends and acquaintances a call and get together. And I will. But as the walls close in and the silence deepens, my spark begins to fade like torchlight in a tomb (whoa, block that metaphor).

It’s been a torturous process getting Julie and Aryn permission to come here. I won’t get into it, but the battle is over and they’re flying in on Sunday.

“It is not good for man to be alone,” God once said.

It’s going to be a great Valentine’s Day!