The Lone Fortress

 Jinelle Chattergoon kept a perfect house. It was her fortress. Every morning at 6:17 AM, she would align the spice jars in her immaculate kitchen, each label facing forward, a silent army against the chaos of the world. The chaos, for Jinelle, was mostly other people. They were unpredictable. They made promises they didn’t keep, like her father, who had promised to come back from the store and never did. They passed judgment in quiet sighs, like her mother, for whom no achievement was ever quite enough to fill the silence at the dinner table.

For thirty-something years, Jinelle had operated on one principle: it was her, alone, against the world. This wasn’t a complaint; it was a fact, as solid and polished as her granite countertops. She built her life as a monument to self-reliance. Friendships were surface-level conveniences, easily discarded if they demanded too much. Relationships were temporary negotiations. Letting anyone in meant giving them a map to the hurt, and Jinelle had spent a lifetime fortifying that territory.

The loneliness, though, was a tenant she couldn’t evict. It wasn’t the quiet of her apartment; she cherished that. It was a deeper, echoing hollowness that resonated most when she was still. She’d feel it as she scrolled through photos of old university friends, now married with children, their lives a blur of shared joy she couldn’t comprehend. They have people, she’d think, the old ache swelling. I just have me. She attributed this ache to the act of moving on, to the necessary shedding of people. She believed the loneliness was the cost of her freedom.

The catalyst was a cracked mug. It was a simple, chipped thing, but it had been her mother’s. A relic of the very past she claimed to have moved beyond. When it slipped from her hand one bleary morning, shattering on her flawless floor, a sob tore from her throat, a raw, surprising sound. It wasn’t for the mug. It was for the ghost of the woman who’d used it, for every unkind word and withheld approval that now felt like the only connection she had left. She was trying to make a better life, but there was no one to help her, no one to show her the way. 

She spent the day in a fog, the phrase alone against the world beating in her head like a dirge. That evening, she pulled a dusty box from the top of her closet. Not of photos, but of papers: her old journals, a faded report card with a scathing teacher’s note, a birthday card from her father, signed with a rushed, indifferent scrawl.

As she read the anguished words of her younger self, a new understanding, sharp and clear, cut through her. The loneliness she carried wasn’t from letting these people go. It was from carrying them with her, every day. She had never let go at all. She was tethered to her father’s abandonment, hauling it behind her like a lead weight, letting it convince her every man would leave. She was anchored to her mother’s criticism, letting it color every professional compliment as faint praise. She was clinging fiercely to the very hurts that taught her the world was hostile. Her fortress wasn’t protecting her; it was entombing her.

The realization was terrifying. It meant the enemy wasn’t out there. It was the museum of anger, hurt and grievances she curated within.

A few days later, her colleague, Nigel , asked her to join a group going for Friday drinks. Her automatic, ingrained refusal was on her lips “No, thank you, I have a lot get done.” But she felt the familiar tug of the anchor, the phantom ache of the old attachment to her story of isolation. Letting go only feels lonely if you remain attached to what once was.

“Actually,” she heard herself say, her voice unfamiliar to her own ears. “Sure no problem.”

The pub was loud and messy. She didn’t say much. But she laughed at a stupid joke. She listened to a story about someone’s disastrous camping trip. And for an hour, she wasn’t Jinelle Chattergoon, the lone fortress. She was just Jinelle, in a noisy room, holding a cold glass, trying her best to be neutral to people and the ache she felt within.

Walking home, the city sounds felt different, not like a siege, but like a hum of life. The space inside her, once hollowed by the echo of old wounds, didn’t feel empty. It felt clean. It felt like potential. She wasn’t adrift. For the first time, she understood she was navigable. She didn’t have to fight the world. She only had to release the past that was fighting for her. The journey, she realized, could finally begin.