In 2013 I got a job that took me to a new city where I had to live all by myself. I got a nice little place and began experiencing a new kind of life. The one with your own cooking debacles and the one where you figure out how to clean each part of the house and spend your weekends doing the same. It was a fun time in my life. In fact it was the most and only fun time I can think of.
This is going to be a rant and I request anyone who is not comfortable reading through a rant to close the window right away.
That same period was when I came across an article about Joyce Vincent. She was a woman who was found all alone and very much dead in her apartment almost three years after her death. She was found next to wrapped Christmas presents and the TV was still on when they found her. Like an idiot I sat and watched the documentary “Dreams of a Life”. Honestly this is not the kind of thing one needs to watch when she begins living independently on her own. For someone who grew up thinking no one will miss her, this woman’s death ensured that it is possible to die and be forgotten by everyone for a long time.
I thought it wasn’t possible to go away like that. Someone would search for us, someone would miss us. But nope. There was an example now. And as much as the family says she was the one who cut ties with them all, I can’t help but wonder what about her friends? Was there no one who tried to look for her?
And that got me thinking. What if I go away like that? Will anyone look for me? Will anyone miss me? Or will everyone just assume I am living somewhere nice and I just moved on and moved away from them? Won’t anyone fight to try and have me in their lives? Will everyone around me just give up on ever finding me and move on easily? So far I have only had people who just walked away the moment they saw me going back into my shell. I don’t blame them honestly. It is a lot of trouble right. But it just makes me wonder… Is that all I am worth?
I know I sound incredibly selfish. But for someone who fears dying all alone and not even being discovered for years together, I don’t think it is a lot to ask for.
As someone who has always faced her life on her own, getting minimal support from everyone around her, it makes me wonder. When and how did it come to this? At what point did I become that person who is able to rely only on their self? Which exact curveball was the catalyst? So many questions…
The only answer I have is, all I got is myself. I am at that place to not look for love anymore. I take what comes my way and I am content with it. Love makes no sense to me. How do two individuals decide that they are going to spend the rest of their lives together? At what juncture does this thought come to them and with what do they support that thought? It has become a fascinating topic for me to ponder on these days. As I see more and more of my friends get married and explore that side of life, I talk to them in hopes of getting an answer. But Alas!
I am still scared that I will some day die and my cats will be so hungry that they will feed on me. I am worried that they will die when they run out of edible portions from my decaying body too. And worse part would be, I would be found because someone missed my cats and their sounds and wanted to check on them. It is morbidly funny that I will have to be discovered because someone thought “I wonder what happened to those two animals that this one person was taking care of”
That would make a fun headline. “Woman found dead next to two hungry cats”
