Solitude
I’ve always enjoyed being alone, where I can sort my thoughts and groom my feelings and arrange my objectives. This fact was startlingly obvious from the first, and later I found out that people like that are called “introverts’. We draw energy from being alone, whereas our energy is depleted by contact with others.
My most profound warrior resistance, so ancient I can’t recall its inception, is my allergy to being “directed.” For my poor parents it must have felt like their third daughter never emerged from ”the terrible twos.”
My father was a very self-directed man, happiest with just my mother for company, so I had a model of resistance to being “molded.” He explained that he never could work for anyone else because their management style always rubbed him the wrong way. He formed two companies that he directed, and towards the end of his life was the kingpin or a charitable organization with a religious bent. He was grateful to that religion since they’d helped him with his conscientious objection in World War II, but he was never a believer. My mother was more mystical, with a strong response to beauty and design, who felt the most important things in life cannot be expressed. A wonderful challenge for a writer.
Conscientious Objection
I said No to
Trooping past the David statue
Attending parties
Avoiding concerts,
Wanting to be alone to write.
I kept a diary my sisters
Jeered at and it was
Pretty stupid – training ground for
Plays and proms
Novels and stories –
And I still make notes on
Everything.
“You’re not important,” said my
Cohort –
“You have to become important
To have anything to say.”
I knew that was wrong – every
Artist I had studied –
Every thinker –
Bubbled like a kettle
From inception.
Reading tealeaves is as
Necessary as
Finding tea.
Alysse Aallyn 