I wrote this listening to this
When I was first single again in my 50’s after 20 years marriage, it came as a shock. Not only that all the choices on how I would live were mine but also how limited my thinking was. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Though the choice was mine to start over, the safety and security of having a partner to come home to every night had become so ingrained that I couldn’t see beyond it. The quietness of the house, the stillness was uncomfortable. Coming from a very traditional family makeup, I had NEVER considered living alone, intentionally. Leaving my marriage was the biggest leap of faith and into the unknown. Like Wendy on the plank, waiting for the alligators below in Peter Pan, I needed a whole lot of faith.
And honest to God, my new night time company of the silence, sadness and its offsider loneliness dragged behind me like an anchor. “Hi sad, it’s you again. Yes still here with loneliness your sidekick. He’s been company for too long and I’d like to share time with happiness. I’ve been too sad, for too long!
Yes, the kids would come and go for a while when they were growing up, but mostly it was just me, on my own…and in my head!
And then….. my friend, the penny dropped.
I actually enjoyed the stillness when I came home and it began to balance out the busyness of my work day. Stillness, quiet moments, a cup of tea, a candle lit. I became quiet in my own head again and I’m not going to lie, having the whole bed to myself made sleeping way, way easier. Small pleasures, and they came thick and fast. I had been waiting for 20 years of giving and constant noise, unable to think for a moment and here I was!
I started to read a lot, no surprises there! And found a couple of great books where other women were doing it too. Not because they had to, but because they chose to. Jane Matthews “Living Alone and Loving it” and Alannah Hill “Handbag of Happiness” are crackers. Australian authors shouting from the rooftops how living on your own can be a choice worth choosing. I love to read and when there’s nothing but time, it’s become a love of mine.
And so I began loving my single life, closing off the world at the end of the work day in my little townhouse, just me and my little dog Annie. The quiet, the stillness and the peace were all I needed to find myself again. For a really long time I protected this little sanctuary away from the world where I could heal from the busy world and the demands that it made of me.
I think when we leave a long relationship and being a part of a couple for many years, we lose ourselves in the process. Not always, but sometimes! No longer are we individuals, but a sum of the parts of the relationship.
Mother, wife, employee, friend, but never myself and after 20 years I had no sense of identity other than being of service to everybody else. On my own, the shadows started to lift, I was able to rely on myself again and figure out what I wanted in life.
I’ve taken a particular view not shared by many, that we all should spend a fair chunk of time on our own after a long relationship to realign again and come back to ourselves. Yes, its uncomfortable and yes the silence is deafening but thats a good thing.
For the record I spent 4 years on my own before dating again and another 5 years living apart together. There will be another post about what that entails and how to navigate an alternate path whilst keeping your space protected. Super unconventional but I was resolute. My home = my space.
I think it makes us better people. New relationships can grow in their own good time. Nothing is rushed or forced and as a woman who made the choice to exit, I knew that I would be confident in my ability to know when to enter something new. I can tell you for sure that it makes date night have far more weight when you haven’t seen each other all week. We enjoy each others company over dinner and wine and the conversations flows.
As the years passed and my confidence returned that living together might be an option for us both, we found a home together that satisfied my need for being alone and his for us to live together. A big old house in the hills that we can rattle around together in. A home for my books and space for me to be really quiet, living in the clouds of my thoughts. And a place to write again. Happiness is back and she’s been lost for a really long time.
Thank you for finding me here, I feel like I’m amongst friends.
Kerry xx