What was that noise?!
the certain bravery of living alone
Around 215a this morning, I heard a big crash.
It’s July. So, while it might be Christmas in July, it’s not actual Christmas so I was pretty sure the crash had nothing to do with Santa.
I didn’t get up right away. I cycled through the regular thoughts that come with irregular noises:
“Am I just hearing things?”
“Was it from my upstairs neighbors?”
“Could it be an intruder??”
“...what if I just figure it out in the morning?”
In the end, waiting until the morning was not an option. I know myself better than that. I wasn’t going to sleep at all if I didn’t get my butt out of bed and go check.
My apartment is full of gallery walls so the noise really could have come from anywhere. First, I looked at the gallery wall behind my bed. Everything was intact. Then, I went to look at the few pictures I have in the bathroom. All still up on the wall. Finally, I shuffled into the living room where I found one picture frame laying face down on the floor. Miraculously, the glass was all in one piece, no shards to clean up. Satisfied, I went back to bed.
This is not the first time I’ve been awoken by frames jumping off the wall. Within the first year of moving into this apartment, the big picture frame hung above my bar cart came crashing down in the middle of the night (on my birthday, no less). Another time, a picture frame fell from the bathroom wall, shattering the glass when it hit the tile floor. That happened during the day, though. And it took me much longer to figure out where the noise came from. It wasn’t until I went to use the bathroom hours later that I saw the carnage.
The thing is, my apartment is only a little over 500 sq ft so there are only so many places mysterious noises can come from. But that doesn’t change the fact that any disturbance could jolt you awake from a deep sleep or cause your heart to pound loudly in your chest or deregulate your nervous system. The effect is often the same, whatever the weirdness is. The reaction, however, is what changes. And, I think, it changes based on the availability of other bodies in your vicinity.
You see, living alone takes a certain kind of bravery.
Something weird happens? No one else will check it out except for me. I can’t jostle someone awake from a deep sleep and whisper, “Hey! Did you hear that?” To which, the other person might respond, “Yeah. I heard you just ask me if I heard that.” Certainly, I could have that conversation with myself in the middle of the night. And I do have a foam bat next to my door from when I dressed up as Sam Malone during a pandemic happy hour. But, ultimately, nothing or no one will handle it except for me. Either I check it out or I don’t.
Don’t get me wrong. It takes bravery to check out any potentially dangerous situation whether you’re alone or not. In fact, I think it takes a certain amount of bravery just to be a person today. *Gestures vaguely around.* But, what I have found in living alone is, there isn’t a swelling of bravery brought on by the comfort of other nearby warm bodies. No. It takes bravery to find the bravery to get to the bravery when you’ve gotta do it on your own.
This has been kind of a funny lesson for me in the last five or so years. I mean, one time when I was a kid, I let a spider “chase” me down the hallway. Instead of taking care of it myself, I tiptoed past the little bug and woke up my mom to handle it. She did, I think. And I would not have slept if she didn’t handle this little thing that probably would have done nothing to me at all. These days, I must either take care of it myself or live in harmony with whatever creature makes themselves known to me.
It isn’t only about…uh, killing things. Although, if my experience with roaches is any indication, it’s a lot about that for me.
It’s about any little thing you may have to take care of that would absolutely be better with a buddy.
Constant dripping from the toilet? Girl, that’s on you. Watch a youtube, run to the hardware store, and hope you don’t trigger a geyser in your bathroom. (You could also just call your landlord but sometimes bravery is a synonym for a stubborn millennial who doesn’t like to talk on the phone.)
Can’t get a jar open? Find you a dinner knife or bang that lid on the edge of the counter, my friend. But not too hard. Breaking glass in a totally preventable way is not brave, it’s stupid.
Fall off a curb a couple of blocks from your house, instantly spraining your ankle so bad it looks like your ankle swallowed a grapefruit? You still gotta stand up, hobble back to your apartment, and get yourself all set up with pillows for elevation and ibuprofen for pain.
As silly as this seems, it’s a bit of a joke that’s not a joke. I think about this every time I slightly slip on a wet spot on the floor. As I regain composure, I often repeat to myself, “Don’t fall down. Don’t fall down.” I think about this every time I get on my step ladder. I often check it multiple times to make sure it’s latched correctly, while repeating to myself, “Don’t fall off. Don’t fall off.” Or when I’m pulling down my heavy standmixer from above the fridge, willing myself not to drop it on my head and repeating to myself all the while, “Don’t drop it. Don’t drop it.” I think about it really anytime I could drop something heavy on myself. Or not heavy. Not heavy things hurt too.
I really thought about this in the depths of the pandemic, as I’m sure others who spent a lot of time alone did. On one hand, I worried less because if I were to get sick, it would just be me. No worries about getting anyone else in my household sick. On the other hand, if I got sick, there was only me to take care of me. If the sickness was serious, there were a lot of questions about how I would handle that on my own. That didn’t end up being a problem, thank goodness, but I ran through all the scenarios in my head like it would be.
When you live alone, sometimes I think the things that require the most bravery are the mundane things, the little things that if you forget aren’t very serious but do have consequences—making sure there’s toilet paper, making sure you have enough food to feed yourself, making sure you’ve paid your bills, making sure you turned off the stove, making sure you’ve locked your door.
There is bravery required to set yourself up to live when no one else is living with you.
Or maybe I’m just tooting my own horn.
After all, I did get up to check what that noise was. In the middle of the night. When it could have been anything. An intruder. A monster. A ghost. A large rodent of some kind. The consequences of my own actions making themselves known. You know, anything real or imagined or existential.
It was nothing really. It was a frame with three pictures on it falling off a wall of frames. It was a frame that I’ve been looking at for a long time now, thinking it was time to cycle at least one of the pictures out. It was a frame that told me I had waited long enough to actually take care of it.
It was nothing.
And so, I set the frame on my chair, shuffled back into my room, and said to myself as I went back to sleep, “Now, aren’t you the bravest person who’s ever lived alone?”
It looks like she made a cardinal bravery mistake. She probably didn’t repeat, “Don’t fall down. Don’t fall down.” enough to herself.
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