Company

Much of the time I feel very comfortable in my own company. I wake up in the mornings and I make coffee, I sit by the window and I drink it thinking about the things I’m going to do during the day. I make scrambled eggs and I eat them quietly while I think about the things I need to do. I really enjoy slicing half an avocado to eat with my scrambled eggs, the cool soft flesh of the avocado contrasting with the slightly springier drier scrambled egg. I enjoy doing the dishes afterwards and the little dose of satisfaction that comes from putting everything quietly away after a meal.

I like rousing myself to do things. Hurrying up the stairs to fetch something or running back down the stairs to grab a tape measure because there’s something I need to measure or something I need to retrieve from the kitchen so I can use it upstairs. I enjoy skipping down the steps outside the house to get into the car to go somewhere. There are plenty of times when I don’t think about the fact that it’s just me.

There are, of course, plenty of times when I think about who else might be here. When I feel isolated or alone. Sometimes it’s not the feeling of being isolated or alone that’s top of my mind more the sense of waiting for other people to be in the situation. Like I want somebody else to tell me what to do. Maybe that’s just another word for loneliness but there are certain times when I think to myself if someone else was here I might be more motivated.

This is a strange thought. This is my life. I’m not quite sure how to express this thought, maybe a good example are my teeth. I have just the one set of teeth, I’m very familiar with them, they sit inside of my mouth and I rely on them to eat my food and to look OK when I’m talking to people and to not cause me any discomfort or difficulty. And yeah it can be difficult to take the 2 minutes in the morning and the two minutes in the evening to brush them.

There is this strange sort of reluctance that comes over me. It is not a hardship or a difficulty to get up and walk across the room grab the toothbrush and a little dot of toothpaste and go through the process of running the electric toothbrush first over the outside of my lower teeth and then the inside and then repeating that for my upper jaw.

I even know it takes 2 minutes because the little thing times itself for 30 seconds, pulses to let me know that it’s time to move on to the next area of my mouth. Rationally, you would think I would brush my teeth every morning and every evening but the reality is that I don’t brush them consistently. This is the feeling I’m talking about. Sometimes there is enough of me here in the room that of course I brush my teeth in the morning, that of course I brush my teeth before I go to bed. Of course I make my bed, of course I clean up after myself.

Equally, there are times when there’s not enough of me in the room. When like a little child I sort of shrug, roll over and go to sleep even though I haven’t brushed my teeth. When I get up and walk out of the room without making my bed. When I stack the dishes next to the sink rather than washing them. When it feels like the work that I need to do right now is something I want to do later. Later is a really strange time, it doesn’t really exist. Sometimes when I’m at work and it is 4:45 I just want to sit quietly until the clock ticks past 5:00 and I can feel more relaxed about not doing anything. This is the strangest feeling.