You read that correctly: “myselves.”
I live alone. Sure, I have had boyfriends but never a live-in husband. Years ago, after many of my friends had been hitched for quite a while, had kids and disrupted my world view of love by telling me they were splitting up, I used to say, “By not getting married for the first time, I’ve cleverly avoided my first divorce.”
Truth is, I never found someone I wanted to marry. And although I adore kids, I’ve never had the urge to have my own. It takes an act of monumental courage to have children. I’m sort of a coward.
So I live alone. When you live alone, you talk to yourselves. I have a number of chatty selves. For instance, the DIY Self is currently planning to clean the window where a large bird shat. The Writer Self is at this very moment telling you about my DIY self. And the Avid Reader Self spends a huge amount of time on Bluesky to avoid cleaning that window.
I have other selves, too, and they talk to each other a lot, often out loud. If you saw me doing this, you might think I was nuts, but if you saw me doing this, I wouldn’t be doing it because I’d be talking with you.
Sometimes, I talk out loud to myself when I’m out walking, but since I live in a neighborhood where plenty of actors and writers live, I can pretend I’m (a) rehearsing a scene or (b) working out dialogue for my latest novel. (I’m not writing a novel.)
Or I could get a dog and tell it about my latest revelations but I’d probably start talking in that weird voice people use when talking to dogs, when they sink their pitch way low to say, “What a goooood booooy.”
Recently, I was standing on a corner waiting for the light to change. Next to me was a wiry little man with a large, elderly beagle who seemed fairly morose. I heard the man say to the beagle, “We’re going to find a doggie park.” Light turned green and the three of us crossed the street. On that far corner, I heard the man say to the beagle, “Now you know the rules. Six or ten feet away from the other doggies.”
One day I saw a woman standing at the curb with a very small, black doggie – the kind with no expression whatsoever on its cute little face. Looking across the street, the woman saw someone coming and said to the dog, “Look who’s coming! Mommy’s coming!” The dog did not look at who was coming, did not look at the woman exhorting it, did not move at all.
I react more when talking to myselves than those dogs did.
Yes, I hear you saying I could get a cat, but I’m allergic and, as you know perfectly well, a cat wouldn’t pay attention to me anyway.
Years ago when I got panicky about being alone I went to my psychiatrist. I told her I had to learn how to be happy alone because otherwise I’d just wind up with a guy who was wrong for me, just to avoid being alone.
I learned how to be happy alone. But I still picked guys who were wrong for me. My Romantic Self still doesn’t have good judgment about men.
During COVID, living alone had benefits. First, I could stay indoors with myselves without getting stir crazy or lonely. Second, I didn’t have to go through manic cleaning as did fellow residents. When I came home from a walk or a shopping trip, I didn’t worry about washing off my packages, or wiping the bottoms of my shoes or the feet of my dogs.
I have a neighbor who told me she dusted her apartment every day and no longer would go out for walks. Why? Because people on the sidewalk didn’t keep their six-foot distance. They just walked on, paying no attention, and walked right at her!
I said, “Well, some people don’t pay attention. I just step to the side to create that protective distance.”
“But they don’t do that for me!” she cried.
Nothing to add.