Loneliness

The lonely nights, the silence right after babies go to bed. The resounding silence when you can’t fall asleep because you aren’t tired enough or you are thinking about something. I wonder how you got to this place—the place where you are alone. If you are like me and you made the conscious choice to be single, then you’ll console yourself that it truly was your choice. You will be happy because being alone is better than what it was, and for that, you’ll smile. You will then remember why this is better and get so much more peaceful.
If you got left because the other person had their reasons, then you start to wonder why you weren’t enough for them. Either way, you are alone, and the sound of silence can be deafening sometimes. Being alone means having no one to hug you goodnight and no one to kiss goodbye when you leave the house in the morning. No one to play adult games with, even when you are dying, play even for half a second.
As a parent, the dating scene changes so much that you can’t really go out and meet people. Their temperature has to be right—not too cold and yet not so hot. They have to be caring but not love bombing you. They have to be mature because, well, the dynamics surrounding kids are the Wild West. Having children and finding a partner has to be the most interesting things about adulting.
When you finally find the one, none of you will have time to even meet. Yes, you’ll try to plan, but then there’s no such thing as proper planning with children. The babysitter will disappear two minutes after you start getting ready, and when you find another one, you’ll be late already. Then, half a second after you order, you’ll get a call, and you’ll miss it because you’ll be trying to have a decent time with a fine gentleman. You’ll see it twenty minutes later and have a panic attack because you call back and the sitter will not pick up. I have listened to people rant about this scenario so many times that it no longer surprises me.
I have been lucky not to get panic attacks like that. I am not saying it has been easy; it hasn’t, but my circumstances have been hard in a different way. Take today, for example. It’s 11:55 p.m. E.A.T. and I am not asleep. I am not working, and I still can’t sleep. I am alone. I am lonely, and that is not even the whole of it. I don’t know when this feeling will go away. I know how it can happen and who can make it go away, but I don’t know when it will. So I am writing and hope that it comes soon.