She stopped for a second to soak in the quiet of a single person’s home .

Loneliness is a way of life that you can either enjoy thoroughly or hate wholeheartedly. She belonged to the first category. Her space , her quiet , her peace was more important to her than anything else that didn’t come with a price tag.

She switched cities to earn this calm. Had chosen to sever ties with her parents who didn’t understand why a woman was fine just being on her own and didn’t need a man to complete her. She thought they would understand , sooner or later. It was 10 years later , and their hurt turned into resentment but they didn’t understand.

But the loneliness  , the choice to be an artist , the option of being a single were all hers to make and hers to keep. But all this was going to change in a couple of hours.

People told her how we aren’t designed to be alone. We thrive on communities and company. We need people around us , to nurture , to take care of and being taken care of in return. And as her friends started to get busier in their lives and families  the loneliness became the last resort and not a luxury . Her perspective started to change.

Around 2 months back , for the first time she consider the option of becoming un-single.

‘We need to nurture and care. Women are designed that ways. It’s in our DNA” her mother’s words echoed in her head and she nodded in agreement now that she saw how true they were.

It had not been an easy task. She wasn’t a white collared professional .She was 30 – an age when one would rather be type casted as rash than reliable. Two months of intense paper work , meetings , petitions , interviews and constantly proving one’s worth and intention eventually got her to this day.

An hour later , the matron looked at her half suspiciously & rechecked if they’ll be fine  as she handed over the barely 7 day old girl in her arms.

“We haven’t named her , we had entered her as Baby X in the records. What will you name her?”

“Xenia” She said with a sense of awe “It means guest friendship in ancient greek. Hospitality or generosity shown to people away from home“.

When she stepped back into her home with baby Xenia , she knew what being at home away from home meant. They’ll give each other protection and the gift of love.

From a nameless , insignificant X , two women became each other’s plan A.

Join me on my journey of #EveryDayWomen tales, in this 26 part short story series all through April. To read the other stories you can visit me at the AtoZChallenge page here . To know more about AtoZChallenge , you may want to read my very first post here and my Theme reveal post here. If you liked what I wrote or didn’t , do leave me a note , a remark , a critique or even an idea for my next story ! Hope to see you again tomorrow