That moment where you almost fall in the shower, where your foot lands on a stray sliver of soap or a poorly suctioned anti-slip bathmat and all your trials and tribulations flash before your eyes, that moment is the single greatest fear of people who live alone. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve lived alone for almost seven years and can recall every time I felt myself go, clutching uselessly at hanging loofahs and bottles of L\u2019Oreal Elvive. In that split second I see myself, draped backwards over the side of the bath like one of those revolutionaries on the barricade in Les Mis\u00e9rables, except instead of dying with honour and courage I\u2019ve come a cropper, nude, thanks to a blob of conditioner scum. Luckily, nothing has even been injured more than my pride.<\/p>\n
A fate worse than death, of course, would be to survive the ordeal but have to wait for help, naked and afraid. It recalls the episode of Sex and the City where Miranda threw her neck out and had to be rescued from the bathroom floor by stunning carpenter Aidan, but not until he\u2019d gently draped the bathmat over her naked form. Shudder.<\/p>\n
Last week a Chinese app which raises the alarm if people who live alone don\u2019t regularly check in went viral, probably because of its catchy name, \u201cAre you Dead?\u201d, a play on a popular food delivery service called \u201cAre you Hungry?\u201d. China has a growing population of people who live alone \u2013 one in five households in the country consist of a single person. The app is also available globally, under the less morbid title \u201cDemumu\u201d. Would I download it? Probably not yet, anyway. I have a few people who would get suspicious if I went offline for any length of time without warning \u2013 particularly from Whatsapp, which allows you to choose to display when you last used it.<\/p>\n
All dark humour about going on your ear in the bathroom aside, there were 426,000 people living alone in Ireland at the time of the Census in 2022. Many of them likely could lie hurt \u2013 or worse \u2013 and undetected for a long time before anybody noticed or checked. The numbers living alone might have been even higher if not for the housing crisis. I know as well as everyone that choosing the live alone right now is a privilege. There are many like me who have not followed the path of coupling up and having children who are forced to live in house shares or with family well past an age where it feels conducive to sanity. In saying that, landlords love nothing more than turning single rooms into extortionate \u201clight-filled studio apartments\u201d with kitchen, toilet and front door within reach of the bed.<\/p>\n
Living alone is a joy, 85 per cent of the time. I was at a friend\u2019s housewarming gathering recently and one of the guests \u2013 a married parent \u2013 looked around wistfully and said, \u201cI\u2019d love my own house\u201d. She has a house, to be clear, but she wished for another space that was only hers, untouched by others\u2019 things and mess and smells. To quote Whoopi Goldberg when asked about marriage in 2016, \u201cI don\u2019t want somebody in my house\u201d. After seven years as a queen of my (rented) castle, I can very much relate. The last man I lived with had, as many men do, enormous canal boat feet. Imagine some huge clunkers of shoes taking over my apartment or, even worse, a dishwasher philistine. We\u2019ve all seen the depraved ways some people treat their dishwashers. I couldn\u2019t have my handwash-only sparkling water machine bottle at the mercy of such a person.<\/p>\n
Luckily, I enjoy being alone. My social battery can only take so much and closing the door knowing nobody is coming in after you is true bliss. A lot of people \u2013 particularly women \u2013 claim they\u2019d be too scared to live alone and while safety certainly crosses my mind it\u2019s far outweighed by the positives.<\/p>\n
The biggest downside of solo living is the cost. Rent\/mortgage and 100 per cent of bills are precariously dependent on one person. Cooking, heating and lighting a home cost pretty much the same for one as for two, and the \u201csingle tax\u201d does smart sometimes. When you live alone there is less impetus to keep the place tidy, and it regularly looks like I\u2019ve been burgled, when it\u2019s just a normal Thursday. Finally, heaving the bins to an underground car park is the bane of my existence. I might accept a canal boat-shod prince into the home, if they were willing to do the bins.<\/p>\n