Single Life

Only being divorced for 6 months doesn’t make me an expert on single life… especially because I was married at 19, barely old enough to have experienced single life before the fact… but I do have some very strong opinions about this lifestyle and how hard it is.  I guess all these thoughts have really consumed me here lately because I haven’t been casually dating.  I did when I was newly divorced because I had a little more freedom and it was simply something to do to keep my mind occupied on something other than stress.  Now I’m somewhat bored in my freedom and am actually finding myself getting lonely and wishing I had just a friend of the opposite sex to go out to dinner and a movie with!  I have plenty of girlfriends to go and do these things with, but… let’s face it… there is something about that male attention and company that even your best girlfriends cannot make up for it.  I’m not even looking for a long term relationship right now, I’m not even sure if I believe a long term relationship is possible for my life, but I have noticed a new feeling lately of loneliness that I wish I could shake with a night out with the girls. 

Single life in the new apartment is all I had hoped for plus some!  For the first time in my adult life I have my own space and my own place in which to do with what I please.  This may sound selfish coming directly after a paragraph about being lonely, don’t misunderstand me, but I married into a ready-made family where children from a previous marriage were in the middle and going from my single, first year in college to being a step-mom forced me to completely conform to a life that I didn’t get to decorate or organize.  It’s so silly but one of my biggest complaints to my ex-husband was the fact that I didn’t get to be a part in picking out any of the furniture in our house.  His house, his things, his children were all there waiting on me and I just melted myself and my life into theirs.  Of course I chose this based on the fact that all-consuming love would be enough to get  me through, unfortunately, after 6 years together,  my young, naive heart  couldn’t make it.  There was no all-consuming love anymore.  Everything I felt was gone and it had left me long before I physically chose to leave.  I didn’t want anyone to live in misery anymore, so I left.  We have both remained extremely close since and I think we always will.  My apartment is great!!!!! 

Now, all this being said… I am in the right place in my life right now.  I know the decisions I have made were not the best, but I am making them work the best that I can now.  Being single is very difficult, especially when you are a single parent.  I just have to keep telling myself all these things in order to be content where I am and love my son every day the way he needs me to.