How It Feels To Be An Only Child

Writer Dani Shapiro has said that being an only child is great training for the life of a writer.

After that post went up, I was asked if my childhood – since I am an only child too – was actually lonely, per se.

In some ways, it wasn’t.

I mean, I had a few great friends that came along at the perfect time, and we did nearly everything together.

But I think I would clarify it like this:

While it was never lonely outside of my family, it was sometimes lonely inside my family.

That is, within the context of family, there was never relationship, or community, outside of a parental one. For how could there be?

Within the family, I was either with my parents, or I was alone.

To one extent or the other, it would be like playing on a basketball team alone. There are the coaches, but not other players.

Similar to soldiers at war, all of the community that comes from facing adversity together as a team – as siblings – is something that I never had.

You do become an introvert and come to enjoy the silence though.

Or at least I did.

Silence and books can change a boy’s life, after all.

And forced introspection can grow into an idle pleasure.

Did that make sense?