Day 33: Single Without the Benefits

I am learning an important lesson with every day that passes. It’s not easy to be alone and it really kind of sucks to be lonely. Don’t get me wrong, I am married and love my husband very much, but he’s in Iraq for a year. I am here in another new town, trying once again to make new friends, find a new job, and build a new life. I have been alone much of my life and I’m actually pretty good at it, but this is different and it has taken me by surprise to discover just how difficult a year alone in a long-distance relationship can be.

There are things in our lives and parts of our personalities that we allow ourselves to forget. I am a fairly independent person and did not expect to have such a hard time when Jeff deployed to Iraq. In fact, I really believed that in a way it would be nice to rediscover my individuality. With a new condo to decorate would I discover that our merged tastes were different than my own? What hours would I keep? What would I eat when no longer considering the tastes of the two of us? It was kind of exciting really, how many couples get the opportunity to be on their own again without losing their relationship?

What I did not count on, was the loneliness. For a while, I didn’t let myself acknowledge or feel that I was lonely. I spent a great deal of time watching football, hanging out at my corner pub, drinking wine, driving for hours – though not after the drinking part, of course. I focused on socializing and doing exactly what I wanted when I wanted, without having to worry about how it affected anyone else. When you are in a relationship even the smallest choices can have an impact on your partner, so in a way, this was very freeing. The problem with hiding from your reality, however, is that it’s not real.

I thought I was fine, that my strength and independence were getting me through, with the help of a little self-denial and avoidance, of course. What we don’t realize when we’re single, is that regardless if we are single by choice or by happenstance, we know that there is hope. Maybe today will be the day that cute girl at the grocery will notice you and laugh at your practiced line about buying wine at the Harris Teeter. Every time you go to a bar or a friend’s party it might be the night the guy you can never quite seem to find, finds you instead. The possibilities and hope is what makes being single exciting and manageable.

Take away the hope and what you have is a person living alone and just waiting for time to pass. These days, I try to fill my daytime hours with activities and my nights with whatever friends, or friendly people are available to hang out. It is tough to force friendships not built on daily interactions like work or common interests. For that matter, how do you even find friends as an adult? I’m pretty sure that sitting down at a table with a couple of other girls who look nice and saying “Hi. Would you like to be my friend?” would be a bit weird. Making friends in a new town can be hard, but when you have no friends, no family, and no love interest to spend time with, life can be a bit oppressive.

So you get creative. I bake, I write, talk to the cats, watch way too much TV, go to movies, take drives, work out, talk to myself, try different hairstyles, wander around Target for hours . . . you get the picture. No matter how active you are, at the end of the day you come home alone and it’s really fucking lonely. I know how to be alone. I know how to be single. Hell, I moved to NYC on my own, without knowing a soul or having a job and I made a life for myself. This is different. I can’t just flirt with some guy at a bar and go home with him if I’m feeling really lonely. I am single, without the benefits and I’m not sure I know how to be that girl.

I am beginning to understand why so many Army wives pop out children like it’s their job. Having kids distracts you, it keeps you busy, you talk about Mommy or Daddy (depending on which parent is absent), and they are somehow able to busy themselves enough that the time passes before their will power and sanity reach a breaking point. We don’t have kids, and I am glad for that, but when the distractions of whatever I happen to be busying myself with finally fades away, all I am left with is an empty place where my partner used to be. People always say, how hard it must be for me and I do appreciate their sympathy, but it doesn’t help. Because no matter how difficult you imagine it might be, it’s worse. I am an independent, strong-willed, capable women and I am drowning.

Being alone teaches you a lot about yourself. I have certainly learned some things I didn’t want to know as well as a few things we’ve been hiding from and now need to face. There is good and bad in everything, but when events in your life happen that force you to confront the good and bad in yourself, things get a bit more complicated. At what point do you stop identifying yourself as a spouse and become simply a woman or man? When I am out at a bar, I have to constantly show my ring and advise people I am married. After so long, I wonder when I stopped being a woman and just became a wife?

We have a little less than five months before Jeff comes home and I hope I can get my shit together before that time. He deserves me to be a whole person, healthy and happy and I deserve that for myself too. Being apart is teaching me that happiness gained through the relationships in your life is not the same thing as being a happy person. When the marriage is over or your children are grown, do you really know who you are anymore? Do you want to know? I am not a fan of marriage over simply committing without the legality. My argument has always been that marriage makes you property, but it is more than that.

Any relationship that takes over such a large part of your life becomes a part of who you are as a person. Take away that relationship, whether through divorce, death, deployment, or college age children and your life is bound to change in unexpected ways. We let ourselves soften and merge from being an individual to being part of something larger. I now realize that there is no way around this. Even if I did not marry the husband, he would still hold that place in my life. His absence would still be felt and I would now still be trying to rediscover myself without once again becoming solely Ame. I signed on to be part of something bigger and its absence has made me smaller and more empty than I ever imagined.

So here’s the lesson: I cannot escape my marriage. A ring, a legal contract, a ceremony are just symbols of the larger fact that my life is bound with another’s. I am lonely and missing the comfort of a partnership, but also the excitement of something new. I need to grow as a person. Only through expanding who I am and working to become a happier individual, will I be able to achieve a more solid sense of self even when alone. Because for me, while I can do single without missing a step, I cannot seem to figure out alone and married. The two are oxymoronic concepts and yet ones that I need to reconcile. Since I can’t fill that void with anyone else, I’m going to have to learn to be enough all by myself, and that scares the hell out of me.