on living alone

people do it and people have done it. just not me. i have never done it. i went from family, to college roommates, to jane, to more roommates and then to a husband, but never alone. never just me.

until now.

so here i sit alone in my grungy work out clothes left over from a friday night at the gym. i have had various versions of this post circling around my head for weeks. on what it is like to be me in this moment. this moment of being married but at the same time feeling very much single and solitary.

how to capture being connected but at the same time living a completely independent life. how to capture the quietness that constantly surrounds me until i choose to fill it. how to try and distill whether or not some of the sadness i have felt was caused by being alone or simply because it was -20 degrees.

i had grand plans before michael left. i suffer from the "i want to do so many things that i'm not really good at any" mentality so i was going to dedicate each month to one specific hobby. 1. 2. 3. months. suss out what my passion really was so by the time he got back i could know what skill i wanted to spend the rest of my life honing. a grand plan that obviously didn't pan out, as they often don't (a passion in a few short months? who was i kidding).

instead i found myself listening and talking a lot. to myself. opening a dialogue where i started asking questions and waiting for responses -

"what do i really want?"
"does my job make me happy?"
"is God really listening?"

truly hearing myself for, possibly, the first time in my life. conversations which made me realize that i have not been as honest with myself as i should be.

the way the world depicts emotion is so volatile and somewhere along the way it tainted me. the world made me think that being upset or telling people what i felt was wrong. so i have choked back my tears. buried my anger. camouflaged my passions. sabotaged myself. and hid it all. from everyone! dealt with everything on. my. own.

and now i am alone.

michael has tried so hard over the course of our marriage to wedge open the door to my vault of secret emotions centimeters at a time. so often that door was slammed in his face. interesting that this discovery of emotional self destruction came only after he left. how all of these repressed feelings came boiling to the surface in this crashing moment of solitude.

i feel everything. joy. pain. anger. hate. fear. sorrow. i feel love damn it! and i am sick pretending i don't to avoid heartache. concealing the emotion does not mean that it disappears. it simply buries itself down deep, preparing for the inevitable eruption.

when emotions bring tears, and oh how the tears will come, i will have to stand tall and battle that demon inside that tells me i'm weak. because i'm not. the world will tell me that i am not enough and that i am mistaken but the world is wrong. i have never been so convinced of anything in my whole life.

so when that demon puffs out his chest and scoffs at my feelings i am going to stare him straight in the eyes (or at least try) and as the tears well up i'm going to let them swell, roll down my cheeks and onto my journaling pages smearing the pen strokes that i have just left. creating a more genuine representation of who i am than words alone ever could.

because in the end to allowing myself to feel will only make me truer, open, and more honest.

and doesn't the world need a little more of that?

***