My Need for Aloneness

I am a chatterbox. Always have been. I am outgoing and friendly and loud. I love parties. I love to laugh, to be with people.

I also need my time alone.

If I don't have some quiet time each day, I become cranky. I lose my equilibrium. During the week, I'm up at 5:30 a.m. Hubs has left for work and the kids are still in bed. Even the dog is asleep. My train of thought is not interrupted by someone walking into the room or by the phone ringing. But Fridays and the weekends are different. Hubs wants my attention. "Why are you getting up so early?" he asks. "Come back to bed." And I do. Because we both work, because he gets up earlier than I do Monday-Thursday, because our lives are so busy, I feel guilty that he's not getting enough of my attention. After all, he's the one I'm spending the rest of my life with, not our kids (God love 'em) or Scouts or even my parish. He doesn't demand much or often, so when he asks and I can oblige, I do.

But...

Hubs knows writing is important to me. He wants to support me. So he asks questions. Lots of questions. While I'm writing. My train of thought breaks and it's not as easy to reboard it as when I was younger. Or, if I'm writing on one of the computers in the living room, he stands behind me. Or the kids do. I should be flattered, I guess, that they're curious enough to wonder what I'm thinking.

But...

I find I'm like a pendulum, swinging back and forth, passing over the equipoint, but never settling there. Sometimes my swings are extreme. Those are the swings everyone in the household notices. Sometimes the swings are smaller, less noticeable. That's where I try to live my life--in the smaller swings. I would have thought that at my age I'd be better at finding the equipoint and staying close to it.

No such luck.