Ode to Solitude

Okay so this happened a month ago and I didn’t have time to put it up, so here’s my journal entry from Wed. March 5th 2014:

... After a big lunch we all decided to go into town to see the football game between Chilé and Germany. Mimi (another volunteer) is German. We went to a restaurant/pub where the game was playing and we drank beer. Germany won 1-0, and Mimi smiled, the only celebration she allowed herself in a bar full of Chileans. Peter and Hugo went to have a smoke while they grumbled about the game and I went outside to join them. A short, thin, 40-something year-old woman with long, black hair and a certain timid, rat-like quality came out of the bar- or she was walking down the street holding a small bag of flour when she stopped by our table hesitantly. There was an energy about her that I was wary of, so I didn’t make eye contact. 

“Holaaaa” said Hugo and the woman smiled and walked over to him and took the cigarette he offered her. After lighting it and inhaling she said,

“Soy Soledad y estoy sola.” (“My name is Solitude and I am alone.”)  I asked her where she was from and she said Pucón, the neighboring city. After a few minutes, Peter and Hugo went into the pub and left me and Soledad alone at the table outside. She sat across from me and held out her hand and flashed a rodent-like smile. I didn’t know if she wanted money or what, but she asked me where I was from and kept her hand out-stretched. So I told her New York and hesitantly gave her my hand. She held it firmly. Peter and Hugo started wheeling Guayo out of the pub towards the car. 

“¿Te vas?” (“You’re leaving?”) asked Soledad. I looked at Hugo and told her yes, it seemed so, and her grip on my hand tightened. “Llevame.” (“Take me.”) she said and looked at me with a lifetime full of lonely, heartbroken eyes. 

“A donde?” (“Where?”) I asked. 

“A... ¿Pucón?” she replied as if she were trying to guess the right answer.

“Perdona, señora, pero no vamos a Pucón. Suerte.” (“Sorry miss, but we aren’t going to Pucón. Good luck.”) I said and gently tried to wrestle my hand away. Peter and Hugo began to tie Guayo's wheelchair to the roof. Soledad let go of my hand and quickly got up to help the guys, giggling as they threw the ropes from one side of the car to the other. When it was done, she smiled and held her hand out to Peter. [Quick note about Peter: He is Hugo’s father and his name is also Hugo, but he is called Peter because when he was younger he wore a medallion and had long hair. People said he looked just like Peter Frampton.] Peter took her hand and she looked at him with those same eyes. 

“¿Te vas?” she asked, and I saw him look down at the hand she held hostage. When he let go there were tears in her eyes. She looked at me again, and as a final attempt she put the bag of flour in my hands without a word and waited, staring at me. Mimi emerged from the bar and looked at me like “who the hell is this chick?” then she saw the flour in my hands. I returned the bag to Soledad and said thank you, we have enough, but it's been a pleasure. Tears ran down her cheeks as we piled into the car. We drove off and Peter and I stared at Solitude as she got smaller and smaller, crying on the curb with a bag of flour as her only company. I tried to shake off the darkness hanging over my chest, so I put on my headphones and put my music on shuffle. Eleanor Rigby came on and I listened to it all the way through and thought about how plagued this woman was by her name. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people, where do they all belong? 

 Soledad carries her name like a cross on her back, walking through life with an aching abandoned heart. Grasping on to any kind of companionship she sees, she watches love slip through her fingers yet again, and leaves heavier each time with a loneliness that I may never be able to comprehend.