275: at this moment in the singleness journey

Where are you on your singleness journey? I'm curious. It seems everyone has different seasons within the season of singleness.

Currently, I am in an odd-to-me season.

9 months ago I was wearing a beautiful ring on my finger. After months of hoping that I might finally be able to do life with a real guy, maybe this was actually happening. But the hopes were cut short, and I adapted back to familiar singleness. But, with some twists.

For one thing, I didn't feel particularly needy. Maybe that started earlier in my 30s, but something about just coming out of an intense relationship left me feeling a bit less empty, oddly enough. Like, I don't need to jump into something else right now while my heart is healing.

I've also realized how not-lonely I am. I have my friends, my work, and my online community of fellow-singles. I can barely remember life before I had this network zigzagging across the United States. I really don't know if it's because I'm in my mid-30s and am thoroughly entrenched in single life or if it's because I rarely feel "alone," but I generally do not struggle with loneliness or lack of companionship.

Which makes it weird because I am writing a book about wrestling with prolonged singleness. One of the huge pieces of singleness is that desire for a companion, and I just haven't been feeling it enough to be able to write about it as accurately as I like. Thus, why I want to know how everyone else's season is going. Is it just me? Or is this common to one's late 30s?

Something else about beginning this writing project shortly after my breakup is that I had to start dredging up all the feelings I've ever wrestled with regarding singleness, even though I wasn't necessarily feeling them right then. I have done so much of the deep wrestling via this blog. Since I've wrestled it out, the feeling of lack is more often in short bursts than long periods of angst. I've been trying to relive some of the angst in longer-fashion so I can, again, be accurate about the source of those short bursts. It's a bit odd to try to stir up and hold onto genuine painful feelings on purpose. Writing life?

One thing that has been surprising is how I still experience late-night, painful mental overdrive thinking about the ended relationship. That has nothing to do with writing. That's just my current life.

While I may not have this constant ache to not be single--because I honestly don't--I do still really miss having someone to set all my hopes onto and feel that perhaps it will be reality that I will spend my life with this real guy and we'll have a real, ordinary home and life together.

So, again--where are you in your singleness journey?