Oddly, the comforting constant of my life has become the air conditioner switching on and off. It is always there in the background, and I can always hear it because generally, I’m always alone.

This is not something that bothers me. Being alone has been my normal state of being for me as an adult. My parents, as broken and difficult as they were between alcoholism and mental disorders, were the noise of my life before then. Always watching the TV, always listening to music, always talking — they filled my life with sound. 

I think most people would assume that losing that ambient noise — losing them — would make being alone very lonely for me. The opposite is true. Quite frankly I longed throughout my childhood to be alone, strove to be alone through most of my college years, and grabbed for a life of “alone” even through the grief and trauma of their deaths. 

I have been primarily, and purposefully, alone since my father died in 1996. 

Even my marriage, which lasted about 10 years, was also spent mostly alone. My ex and I often had contrasting schedules, sometimes directly opposing and other times a few hours off. He was an introvert like me, for the most part, and more often than not we enjoyed being alone together — doing our own things in separate rooms, connected but not infringing. 

Being alone was, and is, my default preference. 

To enter into “isolation” for a pandemic was theoretically not much of a shift for me. Working from home is something I’ve always done due to writing and freelancing, so I already had a “work space” set up. Admittedly, doing my day!job from home has been a bit of a challenge, what with zoom meetings and “office chats.” Yet, overall, sitting alone at my computer in my studio at home, listening to the A/C cycle on and off, is very normal. 

But in these abnormal times, I suppose I should not have been surprised to be struck so hard by loneliness and grief during these past few weeks. It made me distressed and anxious. I suffered from nightmares and fractured sleep cycles. Erratic emotional swings. Exhaustion. Junk food. Tears. Lethargy. 

What did it mean to feel loneliness now? 

It took a comment from a friend about the collective grief we are all feeling for me to realize what my mind and body were doing: reliving trauma. Old trauma, to be sure, but there it was, lingering (still!) from decades ago.

The month of April, 1996, was fraught for me. It was terrible in ways these words can only sketch out. 

In March, 1996 my father went in for a minor operation that did not happen because his doctor discovered a heart murmur. Poppa never left the hospital. It was the VA Hospital in Gainesville, and nearly every day I drove from where we lived in DeBary over to take classes at Daytona Beach Community College then from there up to the hospital in Gainesville. I would crash overnight in the hospital, or a hotel room if I had the money, or in my car at a campsite if I didn’t. Then I would visit him in the morning and from there either head to Daytona Beach or DeBary depending on my class schedule. 

I was almost utterly alone, although I had a couple of friends from my parents’ church in Enterprise who tried to help by watching our dogs and cats when I was staying overnight. I remember sometimes just…just pulling over on the side of the road and going to sleep for an hour. 

I was 25. 

In the end my hopes and desperate pleas meant nothing to fate and Poppa died on April 24th. (The 25th? Late at night, early in the morning…I honestly don’t remember anymore.) 

There is more to that story of course but in short, April is always a fraught month for me and reading about the rising death toll and the terribly tragic stories of people losing dear family members to covid19 was not a good combination for my mental health. 

Being alone meant, then as now, also being very lonely. 

It’s funny how this air conditioner sounds the same as the one in my parents’ house, the one I only really started hearing turn over when I was the only one left alive. When I shut off the TV for the last time and packed up all the vinyl albums and sold mother’s stereo system. When the fire sale was done and everything I could sell was gone and it was me and a futon and the old, heavy IBM desks no one wanted to buy and that I desperately wanted to save, but had no place to move them to and no way to get them out of the house that I could not keep.

I was so lonely, then. Unused to being alone and in shock. I was so lonely I did not even remember who I was.

There is a click then a pause of half a breath before the air handler kicks in and starts cycling air to cool it.