Unmitigated: When Freedom Finally Has You Blinking

On solitude, the freedoms worth keeping, and wanting a light on when you come home

4 October 2026

• 2302 words • 14 min read

Thirteen years ago, I bought an angel.

Not a little decorative one. A proper stone garden angel, although not enormous, and sufficiently reminiscent of a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who to make my son desperately want it.

For the uninitiated, Weeping Angels can only move when nobody is looking at them.

This will become relevant.

The angel was expensive.

For almost ten years, being married had meant that spending a “significant” amount of money involved discussion. And discussion could involve explaining, justifying, negotiating and sometimes simply wearing down the resistance.

Then suddenly I wasn't married anymore.

I remember looking at the angel and having the most extraordinary thought.

I can just buy it.

Nobody else got a say.

So I did.

I can't remember what it cost.

I can still remember exactly what it felt like.

Freedom.

Not the inspirational-poster sort. Not a woman standing on a mountaintop with her arms flung out while a linen shirt billows fetchingly behind her.

Actual freedom.

I could spend my own money.

I could go where I wanted.

I could eat when I wanted.

Nobody else's mood walked through the front door.

Nobody wanted to know what I was doing.

Nobody needed to know when I'd be home.

It was heaven.

There is an enormous amount to recommend living alone.

Tonight, for example, I can sit in my beautiful lounge room with the fire going, a glass of wine beside me, a cat stretched out in front of it and a dog wedged between my legs. I can look like absolute crap and nobody cares.

Not even the dog, and she has standards.

I can stay here until two in the morning if I want to.

I can get into the shower, light candles, put music on, take my clothes off and sing while I wash my hair. Badly. Enthusiastically.

When you live alone, you can go for hours without giving the slightest thought to how you look from the outside.

I can decide at 9.51 pm that dinner will be toast with tuna and cheese. Or eggs and bacon. Or nothing.

I can spend three hours writing and not notice that three hours have passed.

I can change my mind without inconveniencing anybody.

I can wake up on a Sunday morning with absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with the day.

I can book a trip to Ireland.

I don't have to ask whether the dates suit anyone.

I don't have to consult a joint calendar.

I can just go.

There is enormous luxury in that little word.

Just.

But thirteen years alone has given me more than freedom.

Solitude has layers. I didn't know that at first. At first there was plenty of poor me in it. Nobody here. Nobody coming. The easy conclusion that being alone must mean something about your worth.

Stay there long enough and you travel beyond that. You stop experiencing yourself principally through the eyes of whoever is or isn't choosing you. You discover what you actually like when nobody else has an opinion. What you think when nobody is agreeing with you. Which compromises were generosity and which were simply ways of making yourself smaller.

There is nobody else there to tell you who you are.

Eventually, that becomes rather wonderful.

Somewhere along the way, being alone stopped feeling like the space between relationships.

That doesn't mean there haven't been relationships. There have. I've loved and been loved during those thirteen years. But none of them changed the fundamental shape of my life: I still came home to myself.

And I liked it.

In his memoir Did I Ever Tell You This?, Sam Neill once asked where the line lies between solitude and loneliness. He was writing about living alone in a flat and the strange comfort of being able to close the door, leave, and come back to find everything essentially as he left it.

I understand that completely.

I like putting something down and finding it in precisely the same place later.

I like silence that doesn't need explaining.

I like a room remaining exactly as I left it.

Nothing has happened while I was gone.

Nobody has happened while I was gone.

Nobody needs to know when I'll be home.

I live in one of the most beautiful parts of Australia.

Mountains. Rivers. Forest. Tiny towns. Wineries. Restaurants. Walking tracks. Places people drive for hours to visit.

I could explore all of it.

There is nobody stopping me.

Strangely, I don't.

Not nearly as much as you'd imagine.

There are restaurants I've thought about trying and places I've thought about visiting. Walks I could take. Roads I could follow simply to see where they go.

Sometimes I don't.

Because there is something peculiarly sad about standing somewhere beautiful with nobody beside you and thinking:

Look at that.

A view only requires one person.

Look at that requires two.

So I have complete freedom to go anywhere I want.

Sometimes I use it to go nowhere.

I have a long driveway.

Sometimes, particularly if I've been away, I imagine turning into it and seeing a light on in the house.

Somebody is home.

They know I'm coming because I've sent my Waze arrival time.

Not Where are you?

I've known that version.

This is:

When will you be home?

Same information.

Entirely different question.

I imagine waiting in the driveway for him sometimes.

I imagine him waiting for me.

I imagine hearing his car and making the cocktails.

I imagine walking through the door and kissing somebody.

I missed you.

I'm glad you're back.

Nobody needs to know when I'll be home.

If one of us is home first, perhaps that person starts dinner.

Not because they're the woman.

Not because they're the man.

Because the other person is coming home.

Something is being made for us.

I like the thought of being on both sides of that equation.

Being expected.

Expecting.

Having somebody do small things for me because I exist in his mind, and doing small things for him because he exists in mine.

I can't wait in the driveway for somebody who isn't coming.

I can't hear his car and make the cocktails.

I can't make something he particularly likes because I know he's had an awful day.

There are whole forms of tenderness that require another person to exist.

I have a little church on my property.

Sometimes I imagine the two of us out there at sunset, watering the flowers around it.

One has the hose.

The other pulls weeds.

We talk.

Then we don't.

Maybe we have a drink afterwards.

Nothing happens.

That's the point.

I find that completely romantic.

I once sat in a café with a man I loved and apparently we spent so much time looking at each other that the waiter eventually said:

“You're making people jealous.”

I loved that too.

But love isn't only staring at somebody as though they've just been personally delivered by God.

Sometimes it's doing a jigsaw together.

Sometimes it's watering the flowers.

Sometimes it's somebody noticing you've fallen asleep, covering you up and kissing you before they leave the room.

Sometimes it's knowing how the other person likes their eggs.

These things sound very small until you don't have them.

And yes, I miss sex.

Christ, I miss sex.

Not merely having sex.

I miss the range of it between two people who know each other.

Exciting sex.

Lazy sex.

Morning sex.

Hotel sex.

Routine sex.

Comforting sex.

The sex you have because you can't keep your hands off each other.

The sex you have because the day has been horrible and for a while you'd like the world to consist only of skin.

Sex with history between the same two bodies.

I want to fall asleep beside somebody I love and wake up beside the same person.

I want the half-conscious warmth of reaching for somebody before either of us is properly awake.

I want to hold and be held.

Nobody else's body is in my bed.

Perhaps what I miss most is another heart beating for me somewhere in the world.

That sounds more sentimental than I mean it to.

I don't want somebody whose entire existence revolves around mine.

God, no.

I mean that while I'm doing whatever I'm doing, somewhere else part of another person's life contains me.

And part of mine contains him.

I want to be able to disappear into my own world for hours.

I need that.

I write. I think. I make things.

There are places inside myself where I genuinely don't want company.

I don't want somebody wandering in every twenty minutes asking what I'm doing.

I don't want to account for every silence.

I don't want love to mean permanent access.

But imagine being with somebody who understands that.

Somebody who lets you disappear because he knows you'll come back.

Part of you is still beating for him in the background.

Eventually you emerge.

You find him.

You snuggle into him and say:

“I missed you.”

And mean it.

You haven't lost your solitude.

It has acquired an exit.

Sam Neill wondered where the line lies between solitude and loneliness.

I'm not sure there is one.

I think sometimes they sit on the same sofa.

I can be sitting beside the fire with the wine, the cat, the dog, complete possession of the evening and absolutely nobody interfering with me, and think:

This is wonderful.

And:

I wish you were here.

Both can be true.

Perhaps that is what has taken me so long to understand.

I don't need to discover that solitude is miserable in order to want something else as well.

Freedom doesn't have to disappoint me before I can choose to give some of it away.

And I would have to give some of it away.

Of course I would.

Another person changes the weather in your house.

If he's miserable, I'll feel it.

If I'm miserable, he'll feel it.

Sometimes he'll want company when I want to be alone.

Sometimes one of us will be hungry when the other isn't.

Sometimes one of us will want to make plans on the precise day the other was enjoying having none.

His needs will exist at the same time as mine.

I know what it is to share a life with somebody.

I also know what it is to desperately want my own life back.

There is a particular loneliness in wanting to escape from the person lying beside you.

I have no desire to experience that again.

So this isn't a late conversion to the idea that any relationship is preferable to being alone.

Quite the opposite.

I've become extremely good at being alone.

It may have raised the price of admission.

I don't want somebody at any cost.

I want somebody for whom the cost stops feeling like the point.

I've also begun to wonder whether I've been doing some of the accounting incorrectly.

If I make dinner earlier because somebody I love is hungry, have I lost freedom?

Technically, yes.

If I tell somebody when I'll be home because he wants to wait for me, have I surrendered some independence?

Technically, yes.

If I go to the restaurant he wants this time because we went to mine last time, I have given something up.

But perhaps not everything we give to another person has been taken from us.

Perhaps some of it is simply the privilege of having somebody worth considering.

For years, freedom meant nobody else getting a say.

Now I think there might be somebody I'd want to have a say.

Not the say.

A say.

Because I love him.

I asked myself a question recently.

Suppose there were a magic button.

Press it and you are guaranteed the right person for the rest of your life.

Not somebody adequate.

Not somebody you have to persuade yourself is good enough.

The right person.

The cost is twenty percent of your freedom.

Would you press it?

I didn't need to think.

Yes.

Immediately.

Take twenty.

Take more.

That surprised me.

Freedom has been one of the great loves of my life.

I fought for it.

I celebrated it.

I have protected it.

I still love waking up and knowing the day belongs entirely to me.

I love changing my mind without having to tell anybody.

I love disappearing into something that interests me and surfacing hours later.

I love silence that doesn't need explaining.

I love following an impulse simply because it occurred to me.

I love the sheer extravagance of answering to nobody.

I don't want to surrender any of that lightly.

But I don't want it unmitigated anymore.

The angel is still with me.

Nobody has been watching her continuously, so presumably she's moved a little closer by now.

Thirteen years.

That's how long it has been.

Thirteen years of making my own decisions.

My money.

My house.

My time.

My life.

Nobody else got a say.

Lucky me.

And I mean that.

Freedom wasn't a consolation prize I taught myself to love because I couldn't have something else.

It was heaven.

It still is.

But if somebody offered me the same amount again tonight:

Another thirteen years.

Every journey mine to take.

Every decision mine to make.

Nobody else's moods.

Nobody else's timetable.

Nobody else's body in my bed.

Nobody waiting in the driveway.

Nobody to make cocktails for when I hear the car.

Nobody to come back to after I've had enough solitude.

Nobody to say look to.

Nobody else's heart beating for me somewhere in the world.

I'd be seventy-two.

And I think I'd say:

No, thank you.

I've had heaven.

I'm looking for the tap-out button.