01411: Single Standstill

The sun is actually shining today, so life really does feel like it's getting back to normal. Although this won't be a weekend of fully exploring the single life - I have more family-aligned priorities for this particular weekend. No worries - family time is always good.

I am feeling that weird sense of...not moving. And yes, this is about the whole single thing. It's pretty crazy how popular media prefers to present the single life in a somewhat romantic sense - you know the fast-paced lifestyle, the clubbing every night and all that. Or they take the opposite tack and go with the depressing - Adele playing on loop as accompanied by large tubs of ice cream and moping around in sweat pants.

But in truth, the single life isn't always one or the other. Life is never that simple. Instead I feel that more often than not it's this weird in-between state - this non-moving gray limbo where you're neither here nor there. Or maybe this is something specific to being freshly single just after a break-up. Who can tell really, right? Human existence - what more human relationships - is just full of near infinite complexities and variable factors. You can claim to understand the whole elaborate dance and think that you already have rules that make things work, but in the end you'll find out that you're terribly wrong. When two people come together, we're talking about one of the most complex systems that we can ever come up with. And it just gets more and more tricky the more you know one another and the closer you get.

I talked about being eager to explore this state of being after more than 10 years of being in one relationship or another, and that's still probably true. But at the same time, I'm also deathly scared of what's out there since I know it's going involve a lot of ridicule, a lot of put-downs and a lot of disappointment - whether in others or even in myself. I don't want to follow the "typical" patterns that mass media has outlined for us in different TV shows and movies. I am willing to make a few mistakes along the way, but I don't want to go running headlong into them either.

It's one thing to embrace the benefits of being single. It's another thing to be reckless and foolish and end up doing things that you'll regret.

But like I said, this weekend is definitely going to be one of those times when I really am not going to "move forward" or make any progress in terms of these alternative personal goals. For now I'm just going to take things one step at a time, keep trying to move forward all without losing sight of who I am or at least who I want to be.

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