"The sweet pain of being alone"

"The sun caressed her limbs and for the first time she felt the sweet pain of being alone." -Aharon Appelfeld, "Tzili"

 She sits atop the single mattress which is elevated by a two-inch wooden frame. She has a book in her lap--the one she started reading over four months ago, the one she opened after a three-and-a-half-month hiatus. It is the first book she's read for pleasure since finishing uni a mere two weeks ago.

She has just poured herself a strong ale, into a glass she had freezer-chilled for this exact purpose. Perched high up in her loft-space bedroom, she is often distracted by the chirping of suburban families discussing their mundane lives. She always teeters somewhere between envy and disdain. She wants their polished gardens, tended by gentle hands beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. She often wishes to be one-half of the elderly couple who sunbathes together in their front yard every sunny Sunday afternoon. She longs for the roaring dinner parties amongst friends and neighbors--discussing work and children over a bottle of red wine and some sort of posh salad.

But for her love of these things, she would despise this suburbia. The casualty of it all disgusts her, knowing that she only sees what these film extras want her to see. She admonishes the covert adultery, the screaming temper tantrums of children and adults, the mothers who ignore their children--paying more attention to their phones than to oncoming traffic. She wishes she knew the reality, the heated arguments over how to raise the children or what type of patio furniture to buy or where they will spend the holidays this year...or the next year. 

She watches these people from her attic window and wonders if they notice her curious observation. She surveys the page of her book again until she becomes distracted by the neighborhood chatter again. She even peers out the window at the sound of wind chimes, wondering to herself how she had gotten there? Where will she find herself? How will she get there? 

She takes a sip of her beer and returns to the book, searching for the last line she had read, "...and for the first time she felt the sweet pain of being alone."