Enough that I could spend a little money on something unnecessary and enjoy it instead of mentally subtracting groceries, bills, and all the other expenses that now seemed to line up before every paycheck arrived.
In those days, payday had been a date.
Now there were months when it felt like a finish line.
I remembered the astonishing simplicity of wanting to take a trip.
I could check my calendar.
I could check my account.
Then I could book it.
There was no committee meeting disguised as a conversation.
No chain of logistics.
No weeks of planning required just to visit a friend or eat dinner somewhere without rushing back for somebody else’s routine.
A friend could call at five and ask whether I wanted to meet that evening.
Sometimes I said yes at five-oh-one.
That version of me had believed spontaneity was ordinary too.
I wanted to reach backward through time and shake her.
Pay attention, I wanted to tell her.
Notice this.
Notice how easily your own life moves when you are the only person whose schedule you are carrying.
But the memory that hit hardest was sleep.
In the apartment, tired had meant something simple.
If I was tired, I went to bed.
That was it.
I didn’t have to remain awake because another person’s bedtime came later than mine.
I didn’t have to supervise teeth brushing while barely keeping my own eyes open.
I didn’t have to find pajamas or fetch water or repeat instructions or answer one more question from a child who had somehow stored the day’s deepest philosophical concerns until the moment the lights went off.
And when I slept, I usually stayed asleep.
Eight hours was possible.
Eight uninterrupted hours.
I had almost forgotten what that felt like in the body.
Since becoming a mother, nighttime had become unpredictable.
Crying.
Calling.
Illness.
Fear.
A bad dream.
A request for water.
A small person simply needing to know I was still there.
None of those needs were ridiculous.
They were real, and when my child needed me, I responded.
But love did not make exhaustion imaginary.
I had done the math once, partly as a joke and partly because I couldn’t stop wondering.
Thousands.
My sleep had been interrupted thousands of times.
Seeing the number in my head changed something.
It turned the vague feeling of being tired into evidence.
I wasn’t merely remembering some romantic fantasy of independence.
My body had records of the difference.
So did my bank account.
So did my calendar.
So did the sink.
I set the old key on the counter.
That was when the uncomfortable thought finally came all the way into focus.
I had spent much of my single life believing it was incomplete.
Not because I had reached that conclusion entirely on my own, but because the message had been everywhere.
A woman alone was temporary.
A woman alone was waiting.
A woman alone had not yet been chosen.
