The One On Being Alone

From a recovering long-term relationship addict.

I hate change. I hate change, and I love planning. These two things pretty much sum up why I would refer to myself as a “recovering long-term relationship addict”.

Up until early 2020, I had never been truly alone. One three year relationship, quickly and unintentionally followed by a five year long-distance relationship. My dating history was long, but lean. And that’s just the way I liked it.

I suppose this is a topic for a different day, but I thought I’d found the one. And if we’re being completely honest here, so did he. And so did pretty much every person on the face of the earth.

But time and distance are thieves, and he was the one, until he wasn’t.

—

And here we are, back to where we started. I hate change. I hate change unless I’m ready for change, you know? Unexpected change ain’t my thing. I had my whole life planned out step by step. I’m nothing if not organized. We’d discussed wedding rings, where we’d live, how many kids we wanted, all of it. And then suddenly it was gone.

I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to date again. I wanted everything I’d hoped and prayed for. I wanted to go back. I didn’t want change.

I felt so incredibly lost. I didn't know who I was. I didn’t know what my dreams were, what I wanted to do, or where I wanted to be. But the thing is, this didn’t happen when it ended, this had happened a long time ago. And if you asked my ex, he’d say that I started losing myself a long time ago too.

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When we first met, I had just gotten out of a rough relationship and a gruesome breakup, and I felt so happy to be “free”. I’d dated the same guy from the last day of middle school to the beginning of my senior year of high school. I won’t go into details because it’s in the past, but there were some toxic parts of that relationship, so when it finally ended, I felt better. I was doing well, focusing on myself, and I was happy. I wasn’t looking for anything, but that’s when they always say it happens. You find the person you need when you least expect it.

For the sake of the story, we’ll call him Jody (he’ll get a kick out of that). I’d never met a more kind, selfless, supportive, and loving person than Jody. And I’d never been treated so well by another person in my entire life. He was (and is) such a wonderful person, and we both fell hard and fast.

Just a few short months later, I went off to college, and a few weeks after that, Jody headed to boot camp. A few months after that, he headed across the country to California, where he was stationed for the next 4 years of our relationship. It was hard, but we were in love, so we made it work, and we planned for our future.

Somewhere in that time, between the couple of trips to see each other each year, jobs, work, school, and a deployment, we grew apart. I can’t put a finger on when it started happening, but at the beginning of 2020, 5 years after we first fell in love, we both decided to call it quits. And it was rough.

But God (or the universe, if that’s more your wavelength), works in mysterious ways.

—

I didn’t realize how much of myself I had lost over those years. I have no one to blame but myself, because I didn’t make myself, my dreams, my goals, and my ambitions a priority. I wanted to be a wife, I wanted to be a mother, and I lost sight of everything else. I wasn’t me.

I took the next 9 months to myself and I didn’t even think about dating. In December, I finally felt ready, or so I thought. I downloaded a dating app, I met a boy, and it went horribly. Like the crash and burn, me sobbing to my best friend over FaceTime kind of horribly. I stepped away again, started journaling, realigned myself, and tried again. And to my surprise, the next situation went… horribly. Again.

More time away, more time journaling, a shorter distance between boys, and I met someone else. And he was kind, and had a good heart, but it wasn’t right. It ended and we went our separate ways.

A few months passed, I focused on myself, prayed, worked hard, launched my blog, and I finally started to feel like myself. For the first time in a very, very long time. I could finally see a glimpse of the woman I was meant to be. I logged back onto the dating apps, and I met a great guy. We went out, he treated me well, he was kind, but it wasn’t right. It just didn’t feel right. It never did.

—

Turns out, it’s hard to find what you’re looking for in another person when you’re missing parts of yourself.

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The next day, I deleted all of my dating apps, and I vowed that I wouldn’t re-download them when I was feeling lonely. Because if I couldn’t find what I was looking for within myself first, I wasn’t going to find it through someone else.

I continued journaling, I leaned more into prayer, I focused on myself and identified my goals and aspirations. I outlined what I was looking for in life. Not broad goals, but specific things I wanted, things I deserved. Goals I wanted to achieve, places I wanted to live, the kind of people I wanted to surround myself with. I defined every bit of it, and I started working towards them, started working on becoming who I was meant to be.

And just like that, things started to fall into place. I started finding out who I wanted to be, and who I wanted to surround myself with. I started pursuing the dreams I discovered for myself. I identified the parts of my life that weren’t bringing me joy, and I adjusted them. I started becoming, well, myself. And you know what? I actually really like her.

Turns out, I’m pretty great on my own.

And I bet you are too.

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Love, Anne