Time to break my spell of solitude

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

The last four months of my life have been quite remarkable, in a very quiet way. At the end of January, when I moved into a house two miles outside a town where I know nobody, I felt neither the need nor desire to venture out and socialise.

When the landscape of your life fundamentally changes, the fallout is exhausting. I needed to withdraw; rebuild faith; repair my bewildered head; to live in my own space, where nobody could be offended when I jump in the air screeching with surprise as they enter the room, as nobody is going to enter the room.

I don’t know if this leaping and screaming is a characteristic of writers. Maybe it’s just me. During waking hours my head wanders far, far away, and loved-ones in the past have been justifiably upset when I shrieked with shock as they walked around their own their home.

My magic spell of solitude has not yet been broken. Each day I sit and look down the driveway, loving the fact that apart from the farmer and the postwoman, nobody is going to come up it.

For many of you, solitude of the intensity I’ve enjoyed over the last months would seem like hell on earth, but for me it has been perfect.

It’s how I make myself better, and although I’ve still far to go, it was never going to be a permanent state of affairs.

I correctly suspected that by the time my spring Craft of Writing Course was finished, I’d feel more able to engage the town; to start building a life for myself here.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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