I’ve been meaning to write a new blog post for a while, but to be honest I didn’t really have anything that I thought was worth talking about. Life is just clicking along. Same stuff. Different days. I stay busy working, taking care of my kids, and going out with friends, and now that I’ve added in dating for the past several months, my dance card stays pretty full, as they say. And if you’re wondering, dating still sucks as bad as it did when you were doing it. And if you are still in the dating scene, then you know. You get a bunch of texts from a person and then nothing, ever again. Poof. They just disappear even after they’ve sent you ‘good morning, beautiful’ texts for the past 6 days in a row. And you don’t know their last name, so it’s not like you can check to see if something bad happened to them. You just have to imagine things like, they must have fallen into quicksand on their way to the coffee shop. Or my favorite, you start texting someone back and forth for a while and then make the crazy suggestion to have an actual phone call or meet for a drink, and then the quicksand must have made its way to them because it’s total radio silence and you have to eventually go back to the app and see who the next possible date/quicksand victim will be. Sometimes it works out. You meet a nice person. You have dinner and a few laughs, and they somehow are able to avoid the quicksand that is apparently taking over Savannah-area coffee shops.
I’ve made a few new friends. We enjoy each other’s company,
but we also know the relationships aren’t going anywhere serious—because we’ve
had that conversation already. I’m not ready for that and most of them aren’t
either. I would like to eventually meet someone I can travel with and go to concerts
with or just meet up to check out a new restaurant, but right now, I like my space. It's just fun, quicksand tragedies aside.
I guess what makes the difference between being able to make
life fun is being able to get to a place where you are not consumed with loneliness.
Something I wasn’t sure was going to happen for me. I think it’s obvious I was
consumed with loneliness, but maybe I did a good job hiding it. I spent most of
the first year after Robby died hating to come home except to see the kids and
hug them. If it wasn’t for the kids, I probably would have gotten rid of the
house and found a place that reminded me of absolutely nothing. It suffocated
me. And sitting on the couch alone was the worst part of it. I did it every
night and I hated it. I would just sit and watch TV and feel so lonely. I would
watch my phone and see if anyone was going to check on me and the kids, and
when they didn’t, I would try to come up with excuses to call people just so I had
someone to talk to.
I had my monthly tele-therapy session the other day and I said something out loud for the first time. It was a little shocking because I had not realized what had changed in my life these past five months until the words came out of my mouth. My therapist said, it sounds like you’re doing really well right now. And I said, yeah, I’m just in a good place where I’m happy to be alone at home. She gasped and said, what did you just say? You’re happy to be alone? And I started laughing. I said, yeah, I really look forward to getting home after work and being able to be alone on the couch and watch TV by myself. I actually get a little annoyed when people are calling to check in on me—especially when it was the season finale of Dexter!
It doesn’t mean I don’t ever feel a little lonely. I just don’t have that heavy weight in my
chest all the time, wondering if I’ll spend the rest of my life sitting on the
couch alone. I think one of the hardest things about losing someone is you feel
like everyone else’s lives just keep going while your world just stopped, and
you worry it will be that way forever.
I picture it like one of those old metal merry-go-rounds at the city park--the kind responsible for multiple bruises in grade school and causing second degree burns in the summer. Any way, you are standing there on the ground while all of your friends are going round and round on the merry-go-round. They are laughing. You’re yelling to them to stop or slow down so you can jump on, but they just keep spinning and laughing. Your feelings get hurt because you think they don’t care, but really they are just having fun and don’t realize how you feel standing there alone. Then you finally get the nerve to start running alongside the merry-go-round until you finally reach out your hand and grab the metal bar and jump on with everyone else. It takes a minute to get your feet under you and steady yourself enough so you can look around and feel the wind in your hair. And then you smile and take a deep breath because you made it and it wasn’t as hard as you thought it would be. And it doesn’t seem like a big deal to anyone else. They are still laughing and spinning.
There are still days where I wish I could take a small timeout
in life and disappear into that quicksand that seems to be devouring the men I
meet on dating apps, but those days don’t happen as much. Luckily there are
more days where I just fall into my couch at night, turn off my phone, and sit
alone in the dark listening to my record player. And it’s not because I’m depressed
this time. It’s because I’m finally finding that peacefulness that comes when you decide to stop standing in the grass and you make the decision to run alongside
that merry-go-round until you can grab hold of that metal bar, jump up, hang on tight, and feel
the wind in your hair.
