I swear, sometimes I feel like my life is one big Lifetime for Women Television movie. It's incredible to me that sometimes I can feel incredibly happy, hopeful, optimistic, (excited even) about some of the things and people in my life, and yet, still have a small, hard-to-describe-nagging-mad-scared-half-to-death-lonely feeling tugging at me at the very same time. Maybe that doesn't make any sense to you.
It probably doesn't. It doesn't even make sense to me. Looking back, the last two and a half years have been a continuous series of surprises- some pretty amazing, and some pretty lousy. Challenging times for all of us I suppose, in some way or other.
Periodically, (especially on Sunday afternoons and evenings) that lonesome, scared, alone feeling overwhelms me and I am overcome with the feeling of shock and surprise that I am single, as if I am learning the news for the first time all over again. It only lasts a moment, but it's enough to leave me in a puddle.
I'm over him, but I desperately miss being part of a couple. I am so much more comfortable as half of a pair. I miss having someone to share my evenings with, sitting out on the deck by a nice big fire. Someone to confide my hopes, worries, successes and fears to. Cooking dinner together. I miss having someone to wake up with and have those early morning-before-the-sun-comes-up heart to heart talks with.
Two years and five months and I still have to pause a moment before marking the box on forms "Single" or even worse, "Divorced". I find myself feeling like I am wearing a giant "Defective" sign on my forehead at the strangest of times- taking my car in for maintenance and trying to figure out if I really need what they are telling me I need, hanging out or having dinner with friends that are couples, visiting with my daughter's in-laws. I do my best to show that I'm doing just fine, and for the most part outwardly I think I appear to have myself together, but all the while, inside, I want to cry. My heart hurts.
Later, when I return home to my cottage, I confide to the dogs how awkward I feel and how I envy their easy, carefree lives. I'm over this whole thing already, you know? (anyway, I want to be.) I'm sad and mad at the same time. What am I supposed to do with these feelings? What am I supposed to do with my life now?
Don't say go on a date. Please don't say that. I have thought about dating, except I don't know how to do that. Seriously. I haven't ever been on a date my entire life, except with that one guy. The one that turned out to not be "the one" after all.
I have been so very blessed with the most wonderful friends a girl could ask for, and I don't want you to think that I take that blessing for granted for a minute. I treasure those friendships. I'm just saying that I still find it surprising each day to discover, as if for the first time, that, when it's all said and done, I am out here in the world navigating things all on my own. I look in the mirror and think, "How did I get here? This wasn't my plan." And yet, so it is.
I don't know how people without faith get through life. I am reminded, once again, that there is a plan, and I know I need to trust in Him, always.
Oh, how well I know. I'm not the one driving the bus.