Living alone is torture!
Living alone is torture!
I have spent a great deal of my life studying Sociology, if not for at least the primary purpose of trying to understand how to deal with living in a culture, that is the American Culture, of which I believe promotes very unhealthy ideas of lifestyle - the primary one of which is that it is 'ok' or healthy or even satisfying to live alone. Let me share my experiences of being alone - really it has been a torture for me, here are some examples of my experiences;
1) I'm an only child, my parents divorced when I was 3, I didn't play with a child my own age until I went to kindergarden - because there were no children in the affluent suburb where I grew up.
2) My mother worked about 100 hours a week as a prominent surgeon, and was abusive (physically and emotionally) when I was with her. She tried to promote me to have values like 'Feminism' or "Independence" and failed miserably at it. I was repeatedly bullied throughout my school years - in fact, since I had juvenille obesity, I remember being bullied on my first day of school. My mother's response was that 'friends were not important', instead she insisted having a satisfying career was.
3) I left home at the age of 16, I couldn't deal with my mother's behavior - e.g. having boyfriends only a few years older than me.
4) I found that I was living in a continuous state of despair - never knowing whom to turn to or trust. I let myself become vulnerable - but just being a woman living alone puts one in a scary situation. I've been the victim of several robberies, rape, 2 car-jackings, 1 kidnapping and extortion, and domestic violence (which began with mommy dearest).
5) I sent myself to University - and that was the only time I felt I had a social context.
6) I have had extensive health problems, including the times when my face was bashed in by the car-jackers - and there is nothing worse than being in the hospital after a surgery with no one there for you. That is no one to visit you, no one to wish you well or anything. In fact, I don't have family in the US, my family all resides overseas. I don't know them very well, and wish I could connect with them.
7) I had a serious accident while cleaning a ceiling fan with a giant hematoma of my leg. It took me two days to get the strength to drive to the emergency room.
8) Last year I was hospitalized for several days for a sinus infection. No one came to visit me.
9) Both of my parents died alone, and one of my closest friends died last year, it took 3 days for anyone to find him.
10) People tell me that I'm strong, but I can't go on living like this. I'm now thi take care of myself and considered a reasonably attractive woman. I do suffer from chronic pain from the injuries that I have suffered from the violence I had experienced, not to mention the PTSD, but I'll always be afraid to go places by myself. I was car-jacked the first time at age 23, I don't think it is safe to go anywhere - especially affluent neighborhoods alone. I had one associate that was murdered in 2000 when she went to a dry cleaners in a very wealthy area. Last year, my physician's wife was robbed and car-jacked in a good area also. It just isn't safe to do things alone as a woman in America.
11) Building Contractors: Caveat Emptor - I have really been robbed by them - I now make sure to have a male friend pose as a husband and/or brother, and amazingly the prices of estimates go down.
I think I made a fairly good argument as to why it is unhealthy to live alone as a single woman. It's ridiculous that this society promotes it. Not to mention the effect on health - my adrenal gland went into shut down mode - yep - I had an almost fatal adrenal crisis from being exposed to years of stress. I have lived in other countries, including third world countries. I found that the more 'Westernized' the country, the poorer the quality of social life. I have 3 University degrees - but stress has rendered me permanently disabled. What a waste! Worse - unknowingly I moved into a neighborhood where 5 of my neighbors are die-hard feminists. After getting to know them, and asking them quite innocently how they were coping with living alone, I was met with a very negative attitude from that point on from them. They expressed to me that they enjoyed living alone and having independence. Independence from what? Compared to the other countries I've lived in, I would say that there is little real independence in the US, you are only going to have a good life if you are well connected socially. The infrastructure promotes isolation, with the exception of a few cities, people live in isolated settings where they must be dependent on a car. One year, after my physician warned me that I was headed for an adrenal shutdown (which he warned me could result in total body organ failure), I got on a plane and went as far East into Europe as I could get without a ViSA. During that year, living in a 99.9% Russian-Speaking city, I had more friends than the last 20 years of living in the US. When I returned, I was interrogated by Homeland Security for hours...they asked me why I was gone for so long (I stayed so long because I was happy and had friends). But I couldn't help but to blurt out my feelings, "I left because I don't like living in the US, it's too lonely and isolated, I couldn't take it anymore." I feel living alone is like being sentenced to solitary confinement in a prison without having committed a crime. When now 28% of Americans live alone, something is dreadfully wrong with the society. It's a society where there is little tolerance of diversity and little cooperation between neighbors, that's not a good life or a rich life! That's pure and simple insanity and I don't want to live like that or die in such a place; ALONE!