Living Alone

I had reached my late twenties, I was single and I lived alone. While I was proud of my accomplishments of getting my education, getting a good job and buying a house, I was perpetually disappointed by my dating experiences and felt like I would be alone forever. Not only was that a frequent point of contention in my mind, but it was something I was constantly reminded of. One of these highlighted incidents occurred late on a Friday night.

I had arrived home, tired from a long week at work, and exhausted from wherever it was I had been that evening, and found out that my garage door was broken. It had seemed to open somewhat normally, but when I tried to close it, the door shifted and clanged without going down, and something snapped somewhere. Even though I could hear the mechanical elements trying to complete their task, the garage door wouldn’t close. I got out of the car and inspected the door to find that it was one of the cables that had broken, and though the motor tried, the imbalance of the pressure only affecting one side as a result of the snapped cable would not allow the door to close.

Generally speaking, I consider myself adequately mechanically minded, at least to the point of being able to take care of myself in basic situations of mechanical failure. This was not the case on that night. I was at a loss on how to close the garage door, having completely forgotten that there is a simple release, easily accessible by the bright red cord and handle, dangling below the motor compartment and all I had to do was pull the little rope, and the door would have slid closed easily. My brain did not remember or consider this option.

I knew I needed to get the door closed, because I didn’t want my garage left open all night (or longer depending on how long it took to get the door fixed). So, I went to work trying to force the door down. I tried manually assisting the door as the motor ran, but to no avail. Because of the snapped cable, the broken side kept falling faster than the cabled side, the door would get crooked and the motor would auto-reverse and re-open the door.

I tried various props found within my garage, in an effort to assist the motor and failed with every try. Between my exhaustion and paranoia over leaving my garage door open all night, my attempts became more convoluted with each try. At one point, I think I had a shovel and metal realtor-sign frame that had once been in the front yard, and I was using these in my useless endeavor. The large metal frame I had been using, fell over and hit me in the leg on its way down, cutting a nice gash into my calf.

I lived multiple miles from any friends, not to mention it was pretty late and I didn’t want to call anyone for help that late at night. It was in that moment that the true foreboding and destitution of my situation in life set in. I realized how alone I was. As my leg started to bleed, my mind began to wander. I considered how lucky I was that it was only my leg that was hurt, and proceeded to let my mind gallop down the rabbit hole, considering the implications of what might have occurred if the metal had hit me in the head instead of the leg.

I envisioned myself being knocked unconscious, bleeding from an open head wound. I also realized that based on the position of my car in the driveway, it was likely that the average passers-by wouldn’t see my lifeless body lying there in a pool of my own blood. I considered how I could be there for days, and being the weekend, nobody might specifically notice my absence from anywhere until I missed work on the following Monday. I didn’t even know where my phone was at that moment, and realized that I wouldn’t have been able to call someone for help, had I regained consciousness from my imagined near-death blow to the head. My mind then considered how weak I would be, after the blood loss and days of being flat on my back in the garage, and I envisioned being unable to fight of the feral neighborhood cats that would inevitably come to feast on my remains.

I think it was around that time in my mental anguish and despair, envisioning myself being devoured by rabid animals that I was able to shake off the foreboding nonsense that had overcome me, locate my phone, and reluctantly call an acquaintance that I hoped wouldn’t be too far away to come and help me.

Of course the very first thing my friend did was to pull on the release cord, allowing the garage door to slide closed easily and without assistance. He then helped me to brace the garage door closed so nobody could pull it open from the outside, and I sheepishly thanked him for his assistance. My situation was far from dire, but in my imagination it spiraled, so next time you think of it, check on your single friends who live alone.