The good, the bad, the lonely

I was getting ready to iron my skirt for work tomorrow, and after I got the ironing board set up and I was trying to think of something to do to avoid the actual ironing, it hit me: I am feeling a little lonely.

To be honest, it kind of snuck up on me. In fact, I am quite unfamiliar with this feeling all together. I grew up in a house that was ALWAYS full of people--some of them my actual family, some of them just friends or other guests. I moved from there into an apartment with my two girlfriends, and then of course continued to have roommates all through college. Then I moved back home--same thing in that there was always people around, only this time, we were in a MUCH smaller, albeit beachfront, condo, so you were NEVER alone--then I moved straight from there into an apartment with my boyfriend. So to sum up, I have never lived by myself, or even had a lot of time alone for that matter (little brothers and their friends can be quite bothersome).

So tonight, when I started feeling a little off, it took a second for me to realize that this feeling I am feeling was indeed loneliness. I think it took my brain a while to settle down from the craziness of the past few weeks to actually realize that yes, I am now living alone. If I cook dinner, there is no one to eat it with me. If I see a bug, I have to kill it myself (or try to push it out the door with my shoe so I don't have to actually kill it and pick it up). If I want to tell someone about my day, I have to call my mom or tell my dog. OK, I know, I am getting very dramatic.... don't judge me, it's the loneliness. But the fact of the matter is that this is something I am feeling my way through.

So while analyzing this new feeling I am feeling, I started to wonder why being alone can make a person feel so funky, and I think it is that being alone can force a person to have to spend time with themselves. It makes you have to pay attention to your own thoughts and feelings, and sometimes, that is very difficult to do because we might discover things up there in our brains that make us a little uncomfortable. You might realize that you are unhappy in your job, or relationship, or that you are unhappy with your weight, or the way you have been treating a friend. When you are alone, you have the opportunity to recognize these thoughts that are up in your brain that you can usually ignore because you are too busy. Or you can ignore them because you are with other people and can focus on their thoughts and feelings.

While I do not recommend dwelling on these thoughts to the point of madness, I do think that every once in awhile, it is important to be alone with yourself. To check in with yourself. Not just in the car on the way home from work or in the bathroom when you pee. But completely alone. Away from distractions and other people. Purposeful aloneness (aloneness is an actual word--I Googled it).

Now, I am not saying that I am enjoying this feeling of loneliness. And maybe this entire blog is just a ginormous effort at convincing myself that this feeling of loneliness is actually a good thing and that I am completely fine, but whose to say it is all bad? I mean, I feel a little blah, and OK yes, I have been talking out loud to myself a little too much, but I did get out of ironing my skirt for a little longer all because I was feeling a little lonely and thought I should write about it. So it can't be all bad, right?

I think I am right. I think that it is OK to feel lonely, and it is important to have time to yourself, with your own thoughts. No, I do not plan on becoming a hermit. Yes, I am slightly looking forward to going to work tomorrow so I can talk to some people. But for right now I am going to just be alone, maybe feel a little lonely and come up with some other thing to do to further prolong the ironing of the skirt.

The Breakup Breakdown

Here is the thing—I really do not want this to turn into a blog about relationships. For one, unless you are my mom, or the relationship being discussed involves a Pitt or Jolie, no one really cares. For two, who wants to read another blog written by another twenty-something about relationships? Let’s face it-- we can’t all be Carrie Bradshaw.

But I feel that I must make an exception for this blog post. And I promise this is not just going to be a blog about a break-up. But *SPOILER ALERT* this is, in essence, a blog about a break-up.

Talk about turning my own little world upside down. After being in a stable relationship for almost five years, I decided to break up with my boyfriend. This decision was not made on a whim. In fact, I had been thinking about it for quite some time and after finally getting the courage to admit it to myself, then say it out loud, and then getting the courage to talk to my friends about it, and then finally getting the courage to actually do it--I did it.

Here was the thing: there was nothing blatantly wrong with our relationship. In fact, it was a relationship most would envy. We were nice to each other; we gave each other our space but also were supportive of each other; we enjoyed hanging out. This is why for so long, I was able to ignore the feeling in my gut telling me that it wasn’t meant to be. I wanted it to feel right so bad and I wanted it to work out, but I had known for awhile that it just wasn’t and couldn’t.

I felt so guilty that I couldn’t make it work, and for some reason, I was embarrassed. I kept thinking that there has to be something wrong with me: here is a guy who adores me and does anything I ask and is so sweet and caring—why do you not want to marry him!?!?

No Kathryn, it’s not a rhetorical question! Why do you not want to marry him?! I used to ask myself this question and try so hard to find an answer that I could work with, but the honest answer is that there was no answer. I wish there was, but the only thing I could come up with was that it didn’t feel right.

Isn’t it odd that for so long, that wasn’t good enough? Why is it, I wonder, did I think that there had to be something wrong in order to justify ending this relationship? Why wasn’t just having this feeling and just knowing deep down inside enough? It seems that so many women are programmed to think that unless he is cheating on you, or hitting you, or, I don’t know, just an asshole, then we should be happy and not complain. However, as my friend always says, “just because someone is nice to you doesn’t mean you have to date them.”

And it’s true. Yes, he was an amazing boyfriend, and I do not regret the 5 years that we spent together, but when I looked myself in the mirror and was honest with myself, those feelings that I was supposed to be having just weren’t there. And to me, that is a good enough reason to move on.

I knew I needed to do it, but for the longest time, I couldn’t. For a while, I gave myself the excuse that it would just be too complicated to end this relationship that I knew in my gut I shouldn’t be in. I mean, all of the furniture was mine, we still had 2 months left on our lease, and would this mean that I had to give him back all of my sleep shirts that are actually his?

But, I decided that unless I wanted to be divorced with a couple of kids by 30, I had to end it soon. I can’t even imagine the complications of a divorce, because when I was looking at undoing a 5-year-long relationship, it all seemed so complicated, and I didn’t even have to contact an attorney. When you date someone for that long, your lives become so interconnected in so many ways--especially when you move to a new state together and live together for a year. Talk about a tangled web.

It was at my friend’s wedding in Mexico that I finally ran out of excuses. (And no, the irony of deciding to break up with my boyfriend while at a wedding is not lost on me). It was in Mexico that for the very first time I said out loud, “I have to breakup with him.” Then I ran the idea by my friend (not the bride—I figured I wouldn’t discuss my breakup with her at her own wedding). When I said it out loud again to my friend, I realized that yes, this was the right decision. Sometimes, hearing yourself say something out loud can really clear things up.

So no, the reason I lost weight while in Mexico was not because I was only drinking my meals….it was because I was facing one of the more difficult things I have ever done in my life when I got back, and just didn’t feel like eating tacos—which if you know me at all, is a really big deal.

Anyways, I did return home and I did go through with it. The details of the breakup are besides the point and something I would like to keep private. Honestly, it is all kind of a blur and I owe my sanity to my friends who all gave support in their own ways: a place to stay, a hug (or 5), a case of Red Bull, a drink (or 5), a meal, a talk. I think for so long I was afraid that I would not be able to handle being on my own—that I would fall apart. Not only did I realize that I was strong enough to handle it, but I had the friends I needed to help hold me together.

It has been about a month, and I am still figuring things out, but I still know I made the right decision. I listened to myself and was honest with myself, which strangely enough, is sometimes the hardest person to be truthful with. A lot has changed (and we know how I feel about change), but I had a talk with myself about it and I have decided to forgo the breakup-breakdown that I was so certain I was going to have. I'd rather keep telling myself that I can handle this, because it is actually getting easier to believe each day.