Hi!

It’s me.

Before we begin:

Yes, I am aware that some people may find the title of this essay offensive, blasphemous, sacrilegious, or evidence that I should spend more time in Sunday School.

And yes, my Mama absolutely raised me better.

But I ask that you consider the circumstances and listen or read with an open mind.

I stand by my title.

Now.

Over to my favorite British lady.

Jesus Christ, There’s Someone at the Front Door!

The dogs know before I do.

That’s the first problem.

Not because they’re trained guard dogs exactly. They are more like full-fledged Brontë heroines in fur coats. Deeply theatrical. Startled by wind. Personally offended by pigeons.

But when someone comes near the house, they transform into enormous baritone apocalypse sirens.

And because I live alone now, this means my nervous system experiences approximately six cardiac events a week.

The bark itself is not a bark.

It is a declaration.

A spiritual attack.

A noise that says:

THE KINGDOM HAS FALLEN.

WE ARE UNDER SIEGE.

GATHER THE WOMEN AND SALT THE MEAT.

And every single time, without fail, my body reacts like I’m being hunted through the forest in a nineteenth-century folktale.

Jesus Christ, there’s someone at the front door!

Immediately:

heart pounding.

Adrenal glands firing like Roman candles.

One shoe somehow gone.

No memory whatsoever of my own Social Security number.

Because here is the strange thing nobody really explains about living alone as a woman after a certain age:

You can simultaneously feel freer than you have ever felt in your entire life…

and also like the opening scene of a true crime podcast.

Those two things coexist beautifully.

Like charcuterie.

I love living alone.

I love the quiet.

I love belting out dramatic power ballads into a wooden spoon while performing choreography so committed and emotionally complex it deserves its own documentary.

I love having full-blown arguments with malfunctioning kitchen appliances, then refusing to speak to them for the remainder of the day.

I love binge-watching documentaries about cults and Scandinavian murders well into the wee hours of the morning, apparently unaware that this is not considered a healthy bedtime routine.

I love wearing the exact same leggings and T-shirt for days at a time, often accessorized with hair that has survived one too many rounds of dry shampoo.

And I love being the self-appointed Lord High Keeper of All Household Objects.

If something goes missing, I know exactly who took it.

Me.

It was me.

But I do not love unexpected knocking.

Unexpected knocking feels biblical.

Nobody normal knocks anymore.

Text me.

Email me.

Send a carrier pigeon.

Hover outside quietly like a drone.

DO NOT suddenly materialize on my porch at 4:17 p.m.

And they always appear at the exact moment I have finally relaxed.

I’ll be peacefully reading.

Or painting.

Or reorganizing blue-and-white china in ways that absolutely qualify as emotional support behavior.

And then—

WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF!

Sweet merciful Christ.

Every molecule in my body leaves my skeleton.

The dogs lose their minds instantly.

Not protective exactly.

More…

unionized panic.

One races toward the sliding glass door like she’s storming Normandy.

The other spins in circles barking directly at me as if I personally invited the murderer over.

Meanwhile I become a ninety-year-old Appalachian woman in a cabin.

All lights immediately suspect.

Blinds suddenly tactical.

I crouch.

Why am I crouching?

Nobody knows.

I become convinced the person outside can sense my life force.

I can’t let them know I’m here.

This becomes complicated quickly because my car is in the driveway and one of the dogs has now thrown herself against the front door like a King Kong Bundy understudy.

Sometimes I army crawl past the half windows that flank the door.

A sixty-one-year-old woman with readers sliding down the bridge of her nose, dragging herself across the entry floor because someone from Spectrum wants to discuss internet bundles.

This cannot be how evolution intended us to live.

And the salespeople now?

Aggressive.

Terrifyingly optimistic.

Roofers.

Tree trimmers.

Pest control.

Solar panels.

Driveway resurfacing.

Security systems.

Which honestly feels ironic because nothing makes me want a security system more than an unexpected man trying to sell me one.

They stand there knocking while I hide behind a wall clutching a bottle of olive oil that has accidentally become a weapon.

At one point I slept with a stick beside the bed.

Not even a proper weapon.

Just…

a stick.

A strong emotional stick.

Like a woman in medieval times waiting for invaders while also trying to remember whether she moved the ground beef from the freezer to the refrigerator.

But apparently even my own subconscious eventually decided this was inadequate.

Because recently I’ve upgraded to an axe handle.

Not an actual axe.

Just the handle.

Which feels deeply Texan somehow.

My father had one.

My uncles had them.

I once watched one of my uncles grab an axe handle in the middle of the night to go break up a fight at the lake like he was that deputy from that movie Walking Tall.

Nobody questioned this.

The axe handle simply existed in the family ecosystem alongside jumper cables, pocketknives, and strong opinions about boat trailers.

And now apparently the tradition has passed to me:

a sixty-one-year-old divorced woman sleeping beside an axe handle while two emotionally unstable dogs eat the stuffing out of their dog beds.

Honestly, if the pioneers could see us now, they’d be humiliated.

And this is the part where I’m supposed to say:

“Well obviously therapy would help.”

And yes.

Probably.

But also I think women possess an ancient inherited survival software men fundamentally do not understand.

A woman alone in a house is never entirely alone.

She is accompanied by:

every news story she has ever heard,

every warning from her mother,

every true crime documentary,

every parking garage instinct,

every time a man followed too closely,

every time she smiled politely while uncomfortable,

every time she pretended not to be afraid.

We carry centuries inside our nervous systems.

Which means a knock at the door is never just a knock at the door.

It is:

What if.

What if.

What if.

And yet…

There is another side to this life too.

A beautiful side.

Because after years of marriage and caregiving and overfunctioning and emotional weather systems and making sure everyone else was okay first…

this house is finally quiet enough for me to hear myself think.

That matters.

The fear is real.

But so is the freedom.

Sometimes at night I sit on the couch with the dogs sprawled around me like living, breathing throw pillows whose primary contribution to the household is emotional support and methane, and I realize something almost shocking:

I belong to myself now.

The house is mine.

The silence is mine.

The weird little rituals are mine.

The books stacked everywhere.

The paintbrushes soaking in jars.

The blue-and-white china.

The half-written essays.

The midnight documentaries.

The slightly unhinged axe handle by the bed.

Mine.

And maybe healing after sixty is partly this:

learning that peace and fear sometimes share a duplex for a while.

Maybe freedom is not the absence of vigilance.

Maybe freedom is busting’ a move anyway.

Maybe courage at this age is less about becoming fearless and more about slowly teaching your nervous system that the world is no longer actively happening to you.

That you are home now.

Even if the dogs still occasionally make it sound like the Visigoths are approaching the gate.

Love, Lannie ♡