Journal 36 Hot Lidl Date

This week I had an interesting experience: I went to the grocery store with my partner. During the week, we are busy working from home and taking care of the home. On weekends, usually only one of us goes out with the adult parents on errands and grocery runs. This has been our routine for years. But this week, we wanted to get out by ourselves a little bit.

I take solo walks, but my partner goes to stores solo more than me, and always comes back saying it is “depressing” and “bad” out there. I didn’t fully comprehend this. On the empty suburban streets, I do not interact with anyone. The squirrels can get a little mean, but that's only during a certain time of the year.

I guess whenever I go out with the seniors, I have been seeing the world through their rose-tinted senior glasses. They remember the world when it was more cheerful and friendly, and they move through it bobbling and bouncing, going along their old senior routes and habits, interacting with other seniors. Going out together with them sort of shielded me from how solo women are experiencing the world today.

So the best time for us to go out on our hot date to Lidl was the middle of the day. To my surprise, I experienced what my partner was talking about: everything is cheerless, hopeless, depressing, it's terrible for women, men prey especially on solo women. It's like females from teenage girls to mothers of young kids can't even go outside anymore. What the fuck!

Even when I am out with the olds, the men can be so disgusting. They always have been, but this is a different level. In a large store like Costco, when I wander off, sometimes I can’t even find a corner to hide or wait in (like an unpopular aisle) because males will swarm and start their shit. The power plays and the invasion of personal space. Lately women have been rough too, so mean. What's happening? If I did not have my companions, I would never want to leave the house anymore! It's not safe.

And I knew things were like this, it just really hit it home being out with someone my own age. On the bright side, we had a nice time getting our groceries.

There was also beautiful snow that fell in my area today. Enough snow to make soft all the hard edges out there. We enjoyed the snowfall with a nice big bottle of beer!

Hope you had a good week and please have a good one coming up! Please stay safe!

Asya