I’m tired of being alone.
For a minute I was feeling bad. Saying to myself, “you’ve only been divorced for a year and a half you haven’t really ever been alone.” But when I think about my life, the entirety of it has been spent alone.
I never let anyone and even my ex-wife.
This is why she’s an ex-wife now among other reasons.
I was married for almost 16 years, and in that time – at least, up until the very end – my single biggest secret was known but never actually verbalized. I withheld myself, my true self, from my ex; from everyone else, for that matter. To a point, I even withheld myself from myself. In the grand scheme of life, I lived my entire life alone.
I don’t have the best friend from high school that I still keep in touch with. I don’t have a super close friend that I call when I feel stressed, when I’m sad, or when something amazing happens. I don’t have the best girlfriend that I call when I’m confused and don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t have a person that comes over to watch bad movies, eat popcorn, and drink white claw.
Yes, I’m that basic sometimes.
I really don’t have anyone that I would look back on my life and be like, “yeah that’s my best friend,” or even, “that was my best friend, back then.”
I felt so out of place, especially after I learned the vocabulary to help me understand who I was. At that point, I definitely didn’t want to let anybody in.
Divorce wasn’t the start of my life alone. I really have been alone since the beginning – or at least since the age of seven.
I’m over it.
It is time to find someone.
I am a full person I am not half of a person looking for a soulmate to complete me. No Christianese for me please and thank you. I am fully, authentically, and completely myself and I am ready.
I have a list in my head. I am working on:
Who she is.
What she might look like.
What she’s into.
What she loves.
What she hates.
It dawned on me the other night that there’s a person in this world that has a list herself; I’m that list. Until that moment, it never occurred to me that I could be somebody’s list.
I never really believed someone would want me or could want me. Even in marriage it never felt right. Today, as I type, I still feel the sting of rejection – my ex-wife saying, “I need you to move out I want to divorce.” It still hurts deeply, that she had no interest in knowing me. Authentic me.
It’s taken me a year and a half, and though it doesn’t hurt less, I finally realize it doesn’t matter. I am not her list and I don’t want to be.
I am someone else’s list. Someone who sincerely wants to know me, be in my life and share a life with my kids. That is an incredible thing.
I’m going to go cry now…
