Living alone at 60 is not what I expected

I’ve been on my own for twenty-something years. Kids have long ago finished school, we survived a family tragedy, then a divorce, one after the other in the way these things often seem to happen. So yes, if you’re thinking she’s had plenty of time to adjust to being alone, you would be right.

Except I hadn’t. Because for most of those twenty years I wasn’t really alone.

I was working. The young adult kids kept boomeranging back, with their washing and their heartbreaks and their mates on the couch. The house was full more often than it was empty. My divorced friends were out dating, rebuilding, throwing themselves into the next chapter, and I remember thinking good on them, I’ll get to that. I never did. I was too busy being needed.

Then, quietly, it all settled. The kids got their own lives, properly this time. The house went still. And it’s only now, at 64, that I’m coming to the realisation that I actually live alone.

I want to be clear about something, because I know how that sentence sounds. It has never bothered me. I’ve never felt anxious about living on my own. I like my own space very much and I’m never bored. Friends, usually the ones out looking for partners, will sometimes make a comment about how I’ll feel on my own when I’m old, and I’ve always laughed it off. Still do.

But lately, not often, I’ll have that moment of — oh. I actually am living on my own. Not between things. Not waiting for the next person to move back in. Just me.

I think for some women that adjustment happens fast. For me it’s been a slow burn, and the adjustment isn’t really about being alone at all. It’s about building a life that’s mine. Not seeing the adult kids every weekend, but going out and finding people and things to do for myself. Spending time with my brothers and sisters that I never had when life was full. Making plans that don’t hinge on anyone else’s calendar.

Here’s the thing that still catches me. Every so often there’s an ordinary weeknight, nothing wrong with it, and I realise nobody needs me. Not in a dramatic way. They love me, they ring, they turn up. But they don’t need me the way they did. They have partners and jobs and their own kitchens, and I’ve gone from being the whole safety net to being one strand of it.

That’s the right way round. It still stings on a Tuesday.

The mother who insisted on dinner at the table every single night, no phones, no excuses, now eats on the couch with a plate on her knee. I’d have been horrified at that, once. Now I mostly don’t notice, and then some nights I notice very much.

That’s the part I didn’t expect. Not the loneliness people warn you about, the movie version with the single wine glass. The odd evening where you feel redundant.

And then there’s the other side, which I forget about far too often. I get up early, most days before six. I walk to the beach, pick up a coffee on the way, and I’m on the sand while the sun’s still coming up. Nobody to check with. Nobody’s schedule to work around. Nobody asking where I’m going. Some mornings I pass the neighbours wrestling toddlers into car seats or shouting about school shoes, and I have this little jolt of — oh. This is mine. I get to start every day like this. I built a life where that’s possible, and I nearly didn’t notice.

I’m not going to pretend there’s no hard bit, because there is, and it’s not the one I’d have guessed. It’s not the quiet. It’s the ageing. It’s the thought that surfaces at 2am: if something happened, if I got sick, if I fell, there is only me here to save me. Nobody’s coming down the hallway.

I haven’t quite sorted that one out yet, and to be honest I’m not sure it actually gets sorted. It probably gets managed. But I’ve stopped pretending it’s not there, and that feels like a start.

So no, living alone at 60 is not what I expected. It’s quieter and it’s freer and it’s occasionally lonelier and it’s mostly, on balance, better than I would have believed if you’d told me at 44.