My goal in learning to be alone is to enjoy it,
not to endure it
– Me, April 20th, 2018

 

Yesterday, I hiked a beautiful trail on Silent Lake (an apt name because it really was) near Bancroft, and paused for a moment about 3k in, to capture an Easter photo of me and Jolene to send to my family.
This photo, to be exact.

I mean.

Can you see her super fleece?

She loves that super fleece.
She really does.
I’m not just saying that like an aggressive dog lady.
I sourced the sweater on the internet because my pal Mike bought his dog Maxine one like it and she loves it and now I’m that person that buys her dog clothes and I’m totally here for it because fuck it, life is short.
There is nothing quite like witnessing my sweet rescue Jo reaching her training level number-of-dogs-that-she-can-stand-seeing-in-the-span-of-ten-minutes and me then escorting her calmly off the path while she goes complete red zone wearing what amounts to a designer super fleece bomber jacket.
It’s a sight, people…she’s got some spice to her.
After some sit/stay, some positive self talk (for both of us) and a little time out, we are RIGHT BACK on THAT PATH!
She’s an adaptable little rock star, truly.
I’m so grateful for her heart, her stubbornness, her eyes, her joy, her company and her curiosity.
Really, I don’t know what I did without her presence this last few years of aloneness…well, I do…but it wasn’t nearly as joyous or chatty.
That couples shot of us on the trail was not just for the INSTAGRAM (@sharronmatthews) BUT for my mom, because as I mentioned my people were getting together yesterday for Easter for the first time in three years, and after a lot of consideration, with a month’s worth of work coming up, and the COCO (I cannot take credit for COCO, that’s Shoshana Sperling’s name for the COVID and I love it) being as catchy as ever I decided to stay up at the rickety, cozy cottage I rented for myself, by myself (with JO) for another few days.
This little green cottage is just south of Algonquin Provincial Park NOT far from the ECO Lodge that I stayed at last summer, and is across from crown land so there’s no cottages near me that I can see and is just…well…it’s just perfect about 96% of the time.
Stay with me.

When I found out the dates of the hiatus for Ruby, I quickly went on Air B and B and rented this place, because earlier this year when I asked myself many questions, one of which was “Where do you wanna be when you wake up?”, my answer was…

At the base of a mountain or in front of the water

…and then I thought, “Okay, I’m not presently ready to move my whole life…but HOW CAN I SOMEHOW DO THIS NOW?”

Compromise is a wonderful thing, as is living as best I can in the now and opening my mind to possibility.

A couple of years ago, I came to the conclusion that I needed to start planning adventures and events based on my likes, loves and passions, instead of waiting to find people who have the same likes, loves and passions…or waiting for my friends who also have those likes, loves and passions to be free.
It means I do a great number of things of my own.
Just writing that sounds sad for some reason, but actually is very not sad.…or lonely…96% of the time…96% of the time it’s VERY cool, chill and pretty exciting.

When Jo and I stopped to take the above picture, two bundled-up women walked by with their trekking poles, stopping to ask me about the trail, which I told them I was new on.
After we briefly chatted, one of the women said:

She: Are you alone out here?

Me: Well, not really…I have her.

Jo is leaning her fully body weight towards these women at this point, pulling slightly on the waist tether…just past level green, teetering towards yellow.

She: But it’s just you…you are hiking alone?

Huh. I didn’t get any serial killer vibes from them but you never know, right?…still, I answered:

Me: Yup. Just me. I’ve been hiking alone for a while now.

She: Wow.

Then we just stared at each other.
Me smiling.
Jo leaning.
The Bundled-Up Women looking at each other silently, then at me like I was an exotic bird or a type of goo that they’d never seen before.

To break this weird spell, I wished them my best, returning to my photography set up and as I fiddle with my IPHONE to get it in just the right place to take the perfect shot, I thought about when I went solo hiking for the very first time.

October 2018
Driving back to Ontario from Winnipeg, I stopped in Kenora for the night.
While getting ready for bed in the Best Western Plus (I DO love a Best Western Plus) I decided that I was FINALLY going to go out into the woods alone the next day…so ominous, I know…BUT there was no better time than the present.
As I brushed my teeth and put on my eye cream, I mused over the fact that I’d been on a number of Tinder dates that were most assuredly WAY more dangerous than going into the woods alone…and indeed, I was nearing the end of my first solo drive and adventure….and while A LOT of the journey was a blur because my life was still pretty emotionally fraught, it was a bit of a milestone and triumph of aloneness.
Still, before I made the decision about where I was going to go, I got on the interweb and inquired to a couple of women friends who are solo hikers about some of the things I should do or have just in case, a SOLO WOMAN’S HIKING LIST OF DO’S, if you will…and their answers were:

1. Tell someone where you’re going, when you’re going in and text them when you’re coming out…which, actually, sounded EXACTLY like a Tinder date
2. Take a picture of the route on your phone
3. Make sure you talk to the people you DO see, so they remember you
4. Look Confident, it will help you feel confident (this one is mine..it applies to everything else so why wouldn’t it work for this?)
5. Follow the blazes (the markings on the trail), and make sure you stay aware of your surroundings
6. If you get lost, don’t panic, calmly try and retrace your steps to the last blaze or trail marker
7. Don’t be afraid, there are a million of us solo gals out there
8. If you are going longer than 3k, carry a flashlight or headlamp, small medical kit, all-in-one tool, phone charger, more water than you think you need, a couple extra layers, rain gear, clif bars, trail mix…and again, DON’T BE AFRAID.

When I woke up the next morning in Kenora, there was a light snow falling and I was 100% sure I was nuts to go into the woods alone snow or no…but I was fucking going…it was time to be brave and do one of the things I wanted to do forever and could NOW indulge in, now that I only had me to take care of.
After I dressed myself appropriately, I went forth from Kenora’s Best Western Plus, gathering everything that I didn’t already have on the SOLO WOMAN’S HIKING LIST OF DOS, drove to the trail head, texted Ari my location, took a picture of the map on my AllTrails app just in case I lost service, got out of the car, stood there, considered getting back in the car 10 times as I looked past the snowfall into the woods…closed my eyes and gathered some courage from all the hiking mamas who’ve gone before me, the simply put one foot in front of the other for about two hours.
I saw NO one else the whole time.
I was level 3 out of 10 fussed most of the hike.
I was jumpy as a level yellow Jolene.
It was 96% perfect.
This is a self portrait from that day, and my very first solo hike.

After that hike in Kenora, it became easier every time, AND I always stuck (and still do stick) to the above DOS list.
Now, I would be lying if I didn’t mention that I’ve had some mishaps and gut check moments.
I’ve fallen into bogs, lost my shoes in bogs, dug my shoes out of bogs, bought hiking boots instead (harder to get sucked off in bogs), gotten lost, got myself found, been eaten alive by bugs, balanced on rocks that weren’t nearly as immoveable as they first appeared, almost fallen backwards off a steep incline in California…something that Rebecca Liddiard stopped from happening by pushing me forward by the butt, gone farther than I thought I could, gone farther than I should have gone, tried to outrun the sunset on the escarpment (scary and successful), sat on the sides of hills looking at wonderful views while eating ham sandwiches, taken my friends out hiking, gotten us BOTH lost, HELPED to get us found, laughed, talked, been silent, and a number of times been more purely happy than I’ve been since I was a kid.
The hiking…it’s a fucking joy…a real joy.
One of the fringe benefits ( I used to think the phrase was FRENCH BENEFITS, which I imagined had something to do with either french fries or french kissing) was that the more I hiked, the more I considered (and still consider) doing other things I might have never done alone…hence my trip to Tofino, my hike into the Eco Lodge, weeks alone at my nieces cottage last year, and other things I cannot think of right now.
I experienced 100% joy NUMEROUS times on all of these adventures…and I’m sure on the other things that I cannot think of right now.

Yesterday, about an hour after I saw the Bundled-Up Women, Jo and I passed a backpacking dude and his super sweet unleashed border collie.
Jo was only at level yellow when the dog walked by, so it was manageable.
He and I greeted each other without pausing, continuing on our separate ways, and after a fashion, I silently mused that if I was a dude I don’t think my aloneness would have figured or been of note to the Bundled-Up Women.
A good friend of mine pointed out that women are more vulnerable out there, and while our inherent physical make up is indeed not as strong…this fact still pisses me off…AND I really wish we gals could go out in the woods and not be some level of prepared for danger or afraid.
But still…what if…
Just a bit farther on Jo and I took a little break, sitting on a outcropping of the gorgeous Precambrian Shield, both of us looking out over the still thawing lake, and I poured Jo some water in her little cute collapsable bowl.
As I drank some water out of the same bottle, I decided that maybe, till I start feeling 100% okay about being alone…and I plan on this happening…in moments of discomfort or anxiety of alone-ness…I should remind myself that dudes like the backpacking guy I just passed have being doing the lone-wolf thing for years…and been just fine…and survived.
They are celebrated, even.
So much literature has been written about them, honestly it’s shocking…and a bit eye-roll inducing, if you don’t mind me sayin’.

Sharron, dudes have been doing this alone thing for years…it’s not special. It just is. Be it.BE it. Be prepared…but BE IT.

Not very feminist of me, I know, to pretend that I’m a dude, but it seems like a pretty good idea…or IS it feminist of me?
I am unsure.
Feminism confuses and intrigues me in equal measure. Don’t BE MAD!! I CONSIDER MYSELF A FEMINIST…BUT GALS HAVE TO ASK QUESTIONS!!

Back to Silent Lake.
Relaxing and musing on our rock, I turned to JO, told her my idea about inhabiting DUDENESS, and she seemed pretty chuffed about it.
Like, level yellow.

SIDEBAR: The coloured levels of dog excitement were taught to me by my friends Constance and Sasha, they made perfect sense to me, help me a bunch and are as follows:
Green = Calm and totally teachable
Yellow = Slightly fussed by can still learn something
Orange = Fussed but maybe can be brought back down to yellow
Red = TOTALLY FUSSED, WILL LEARN NOTHING HERE, PLEASE TAKE ME OUT OF SITUATION OF HELLISHNESS
But what about her super fleece in that picture, right?
End of Sidebar.

You see, I’m really 96% content being alone…so much so, that I have to make a concerted effort to see other humans, sometimes…which makes the pandemic a challenge in 1000 more ways.
But the other 4% is quite honestly, difficult.
It just is.
Hard to admit, but true all the same.

Four years ago, when I went met with my therapist after the end of my marriage, at one of our first few appointments I found myself saying:

Me: I think….you know, I think I’ve been lonely for a while.

She: How long?

I sat and sat, eyes pointed up towards the ceiling of her comfy office, like the answer was written on the tiles over my head.
Mentally, I scrolled back farther and farther in my life story…farther and farther.
Finally after a few minutes, it was with not a little bit of surprise and a fairly heavy heart that I said:

Me: I think…I think I’ve been at least a little bit lonely as long as I can remember. Wow. I’ve always been a bit lonely. I’ve been such a low grade lonely, along with a low grade afraid…or…or anxious… that I didn’t even know what it was or named it. Jesus. That cannot be good. Right? That can’t be good. This CANNOT be good.

She: It’s good…it’s really good because the important thing is now you know. There’s no going back…you have to face it…to change it…what should you do about it?

So, I started to work on it.
It was not easy. The realization or the work.

I spent a lot of my time alone as a kid, and as I got older, it just kept on…even when I was married. If I was on my own, I usually stayed to myself.
In retrospect, I believe that I thought the staying to myself (when I was young AND grown) would make life and people less prone to disappointment or even that it was easier being alone than exhausting myself being what I believed everyone wanted me to be…I could just quietly be me, with me.
Back then I was so conditioned to please, to not disrupt, as many young women were…and still are…that trying to check all the boxes of what was correct and likeable was a full time job.
Just me?
AND I have to add here that there were many times I was more than content and other times when I was very happy to be alone.
96% Happy.

But…its that friggen 4%.

The goddamned 4%.
Oh, yeah, THE goddamed 4% lonely-aloneness has stayed VERY close friends with my anxiety.
Like GROUP CHAT close.

The 4%, that disliked but long minded, antiquated part of me that kept me separate and (I guess) safe growing up, is the same past-its-best-buy-date part that relentlessly told me for half of my road trip to Tofino…told me every morning that I got in the car and headed away from home:

4%: Maybe you should just go home. That’s far enough, right? Alone people don’t do things like this, right? This is nuts. Go home. Something bad will happen.

And I would tell the 4% to go fuck itself, lean into the 96%, and drive on.

And here, alone in this space, when I wake up in this cottage, take Jo out for her morning walk and collect kindling for the night’s fire, have breakfast, stretch, play with Jo, do some work, read, get us ready for a hike, I am quite nearly perfect.
I’m content, happy…I am 96%.

Then…when I get in the car for the hike, the 4% shows up:

4%: Should you really do this? What if you get hurt? Or lost? Or hurt and lost? All alone. Out there. Something bad will happen for sure.

96% says ONWARD HO…And I turn on the ignition, and drive.

On the hike, I usually start a bit anxious… BUT I know it will pass, AND again I lean into the 96%, then my feet assume the rhythm, slowly my brain empties of bullshit, my eyes focus on ONLY Jo and what’s directly in front of us and then there is ALWAYS a place, a moment, a long extended bliss when 96% pushes upwards to the sweetest of all spaces, and I am 100% happy.
Always.
Every.
Single.
Time.
That’s why I love the hiking and as I’ve said in my blog posts, on INSTAGRAM and FACEBOOK (when I used to write on there), when I’m 100% happy, attention must be paid.
And I find myself 100% happy more and more…in many situations.

Yesterday, near the end of the hike I came around a corner and saw a bench on the edge of the lake, just sitting there, bathed in sunlight.
We walked over, I took off my pack, Jo hopped up on the bench, I unzipped my pack and took my down vest out (EXTRA LAYERS) and set it down for her, she took the invitation and lay down on top of it to bask.
I sat down beside her, pulled out my book and read a few pages.
It was fucking delightful…and I was 100% happy.
I truly felt like a queen.

When I got back from the hike, when I got Jo her dinner, when I made myself dinner, when I made the fire for the night, when I read, watched TV with Ari, when I wrote a bit…96% content.

Then.
When I finally start to make the move to go shut down ( some nights I put it off forever) and go to bed for the night…this is the 4%’s favourite time to truly shine.
The success of the 4% really depends on how tired I am, how REALLY alone I feel in that moment, and/or how by-myself I’ve been all day…so up at this cottage, the 4%’s had some really great nights.
Me, not so much.

4%: God, you’re so alone out here. You are SOOOO alone. No one here but you. What will happen if (fill in shitty thing that could happen)? Will you be alone forever? Gosh…that would be sad.

I meditate.
I breathe.
I fight.
I stop fighting.
I reframe.
I breathe.
I put on wave sounds.
I fall asleep…eventually.

This is why I go to sleep so late, and have my whole life.
EXCEPT when I was married.
I could almost always sleep when I was married and we were in the same bed, the 4% just a low grade thing I barely even noticed.
Which, I gotta tell you, irks me to no end.
The only time it showed up was when I was out on tour, when he was gone, or when I was REALLY worried.

When the door closed on my ex, I was so overwhelmed by the 4%…which was a pretty strong 60% at that moment, if I’m being totally honest, I didn’t know if I’d be okay in ALONE.
I was so overwhelmed by ALONE, it almost felt physical, and I got up from the couch, opened my computer, writing down the goal that I quoted at the top of this piece.
Yes, almost EXACTLY four years ago.
I do like a sense of occasion.

Going to bed truly alone for the first time in twenty-seven years…well, let me put it this way, I didn’t sleep more than three hours for months.
True story.
FRUSTRATED AS HELL, and more than a bit scared at the state of my brain and body, I made an appointment with my doctor, telling her that I thought I was going to expire from not sleeping.
She informed me that we could function quite well on three hours, if need be, for an extended period of time…and gave me some emergency sleeping pills that she promptly scared me out of ever using.
Whether she was just trying to make the inevitable, palatable, I don’t know…but at least she helped me feel like I would not die from lack of sleep…so for that, I thank her.
But when I laid down every night, the 4% would start tap dancing…there seemed to be almost nothing I could do, but wait it out till I passed out from exhaustion, which I eventually did.

Then like a weird montage from a movie about a grown ass woman who is working her ass off to keep it together and who somehow, some-fucking-way is trying to move from surviving to thriving…time passed and things…well…as they do if you are patient, got better. Just so you know, patience is not my strong suit. It’s been a journey.
Time really is a wild, methodical healer.
AND I’ve gotten better and better at facing the 4%, dealing with it, and working towards it’s eventual demise…but solitary times like this, times that are far from my people…or far from ANY people, the 4% puts on it’s party dress…and challenges me.
AND I grit my teeth and meet it.

Some nights, it can make the 96% seem like it never even happened…or ever happens.
Which I fucking hate.

Yes, alone can be hard…but I also really love solitude and being the captain of my own life.
Two things are true at once.
96% and 4%. They add up, right?

My biggest win now is that I don’t feel like I need someone simply to keep the 4% quiet.
Sometimes, I do have to endure it, but other times I DO enjoy the aloneness…and I can go to sleep content.
96%.

Some might think 96% perfect is enough…but I want it all.

And what is perfect? For me? It’s being at peace in my life with a passion for living while being on my own.

Alone…also, whatever that means…there are SO many different versions of alone.

Right now, I’m sitting in front of a dying fire, my Jo is in her bed looking cute at a sleeping level green, it’s raining out, there are a million sounds that four years ago would have scared the shit out of me, and are presently not bothering me at all.
The windows are uncurtained and it’s dark outside…and I’m still unbothered.
I’m at 96%.
Maybe 4% can go hang, tonight.

Tonight? I’m a lone-wolf.

AWHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

4% will NEVER stop me from doing shit like this.
Never never never never never X infinity.

Amen.
Bunnies and Kitties.
Namaste.
Shippoopy.

Just South Of Algonquin Provincial Park
April 19th 2022 – S.M.

UPDATE:
A couple of things, people.

1. At 3:00am, about four hours after I finished writing this, I was sleeping in the not-very-comfy bed in the cottage on the edge of the uninhabited lake, and Jolene started barking and running around the cottage…the first time she’d done this since we arrived…and I leapt out of the bed in underwear and a grey t-shirt that says SHE’S A BOSS BITCH on it, heart beating for JESUS, and ran around the cottage looking for the serial killer that was FOR SURE in there.
While I madly scanned the corners, all I could think was:

Me: Well, if this is how I go, at least I’ve had a good run of it.

After about 10 minutes of pure adrenaline and fear, I got back into the not very comfy bed.
I closed my eyes for a couple of minutes and when I opened them Jo padded back into the room after silently checking the perimeter.
She is not to be fucked with.
She might be small…but she is a very nipply rescue whose obviously seen some shit and is ready to fight.
I love that about her.

2. My friend Bill, who is my hair guru as well, just did my roots (it’s about four days later) and as he applied the colour to my brown/grey edges, he said:

He: Shar, that dog was ready to come home by the end (he’s is referring to all my shots on the INSTAGRAM)…she looked done in. That dog was exhausted, Shar…she must have needed an emotional support dog herself after all the adventures you took her on.

I laughed so hard, I almost popped a rib.
She was VERY game, god bless her.
But just to be clear…this girl dog can GOOOOOOOO!!!

All the best, People!