I am alone.  I have a movie of my choice on the TV, I ate what I wanted for dinner and my Diet Coke is sitting beside me on the table.  Life is good.  The volume is the volume I want, the temp on the thermostat is what I want, the lighting is what I want.  I love my family more than anything, but with family there is necessary and important  compromise.  Alone means no compromise, at least temporarily.

When my husband and I were first married, it was the first time I had lived anywhere besides my parent’s house.  I never lived on my own. That meant that I never slept in the house alone – ever.  After I got married, while it didn’t happen all the time, there were times when I had to stay home alone, and I was SO not prepared.  I heard every little tiny sound, imagined movement in every shadow, couldn’t sleep without a light on – it was miserable.  Even when the boys came along, I felt responsible so I had to pretend I wasn’t afraid, but I was.  My home, a place where I should be experiencing my greatest peace was anything but.

I’m not sure where that fear came from and looking at it now it seems really unreasonable, but it was there and I hated being alone because of it.  Then something happened, quite unplanned, but probably one of the best things that could have happened to me.  I began to travel to conferences and meetings by myself and with that meant staying in hotels alone out of necessity.  At first it was quite the transition.  Which lights could I leave on and have just enough light but not too much?  Were all of the doors closed and locked if possible?  And over the years, I have finally gotten to that point where I can be alone and be okay with it.  That might not seem like big deal to some but for me that meant independence without fear.

I talk with young women today and, because of my personal experience, I’m always amazed and slightly jealous of their independence at such an young age.  They have their own apartments, cars, finances, none of which I had until I was married.  It was a different time I suppose, or maybe I came from an old fashioned family who insisted that I stay with them until I had a husband to go to.  Independence was certainly not encouraged, especially for me as a girl.  They were very open with the idea that boys and girls should be treated differently in terms of how late we could be out and who we could be with, full of warnings about what could happen to girls and what kind of reputation they could have if the didn’t follow the rules of safety.  At the time it made me angry because it wasn’t fair, but what it really did was set me up to believe that I couldn’t do things on my own without someone to take care of me.

Tomorrow I leave on a plane to go to National Assembly, the first time I haven’t traveled with at least one or two of my cohorts.  All alone.  Again, for some this is not a big deal, but for me it’s just another step in my independence, just another thing I know I can do successfully on my own.  While happening late in my life, at least it has happened and I’m grateful.  So here’s to a week of adventure in D.C. filled with lots of learning and decisions I can make on my own.  Because I can be alone.