Divorce, tonight, is despair and a reckoning and a solitude the kind of which I have never known. I have no map for this journey, no reference guide for my feelings.
I’m 34 and single; the mother of two children. After nearly nine years of dating and marriage and painful separation, I’m alone, every night. The last time I was single, I was young. Hot. Lived in a hot town. Knew lots of fabulous people. The world was mine and I did as I liked.
Fast forward nearly a decade.
I live in a great neighborhood for my kids, surrounded by married couples in suburbia.
I attend a great church, comprised of older folks and young families. I may be the only single person under 60 (i.e. not a widow).
I have wonderful friends; all of them married or coupled off. I know two single people, and they are doing their own thing.
I talked to my friend Amanda about this tonight and she said, “Well, I just think of myself as an individual, not as a married woman.”
Yes, but I was, and now I’m not, and I’m fine alone, mostly, but my frame of reference has been completely upended and I don’t know what to do with my time anymore. My social life used to consist mostly of ladies’ nights: neighborhood girls’ get togethers, dinner out with old girlfriends, wine night, etc. That was fine. I was leaving my husband for a few hours but then I would come home and we’d talk, cuddle, etc.
Now I come home to an empty house. I still want time with my friends, as I do value that time highly, but I have nothing else. No one to chat to, flirt with, kiss, or cook for me/for/with me at home.
I want to at least go to places where I am not the only single person.
I know people don’t meet in bars, and I’m not sure I’d want to date someone I met at a bar anyhow, but it’s at least fun to be out, with others of the opposite sex. I think. I’m not really sure as I haven’t been in that situation since 2004 but I’m sure that’s the same. The only men I see these days are: my soon to be ex, my friends’ husbands, my neighbors, and the meter checker.
The landscapers and meter guys are starting to look really, really good.
I need a date and soon but I don’t know anyone and nobody knows me, and tucked away in safe suburbia I will surely die of born again virginity.
Oh, and I put my online dating profile up for a few days and then took it down. I only heard from guys I wouldn’t consider (way older, overweight, unemployed, etc.).
How to get my groove back?
I feel so raw, exposed, and lonely.
I don’t want to be an empty half, as a friend referred to someone we know, but I do feel that something is missing.