Floatin Alone won't kill You

Every one leaves. Eventually we all leave someone somewhere at some point. It’s the leaving that keeps me from loving completely sometimes. I see the Leaving coming and I find myself shutting down to stop the hurt before it starts hurting.


Probably my first experience with someone Leaving was my Dad. It wasn’t his fault. The war called him. Then he was paralyzed and lived, in what I can now only imagine, was his own personal hell. He slipped away from us then, before we even had a chance to get to know him or find out in person that he loved us. When he died I knew he Left, I just didn’t realize that it would be something that would be in my Life forever. His Leaving. It started a catalyst that seemed to be the precedence for my Life. Some say you get what you Fear if you focus on it long enough.

I don’t miss the irony that I have always feared Living Alone. And yet here I am. Doing just that. It hasn’t killed me, obviously. But I don’t enjoy it. I hate it in fact. Especially as my girls get older and busier and the house is empty more times than not.

I chuckle inwardly every time a married woman says to me, “you should spend some time alone”.

That’s really all I’ve ever done.

Hard to believe since I spent over half my life married to two different men. But there it is. Most of the time they weren’t there. Working Nights. Playing Days. Living in the Garage or Alaska.

In all fairness, Sometimes even when they were there. I wasn’t. I look back and realize that there were so many times I wasn’t present in the moment. I was off in my mind somewhere. With my Dad. Or my Dead Babies. Or my Childhood Memories. Opening and closing all of the boxes in my head randomly. Diving in and jumping out, not knowing what to do with all the information that rested uneasily there.

I was alone in my thoughts while being in a room full of people or sitting at the lake watching my girls play in the sand. That surreal moment just before the sun would go down and the sky would be orange. Their bodies black wiggly giggly silhouettes against the water. The boats and the jet skies creating a background noise and entertaining waves. And I’d just be sitting there thinking about how tired I was of doing ‘this’ alone. Life.

Those who have been doing it for years may not understand fully the blessing of having a ‘husband’ whom every night will wrap their arms around you at the end of the day and make it all worth while. Because they have it. It is only that which we don’t have that we want the most and that which we do have that we forget to not take for granted.

I’m blessed to have what I have and I am grateful to have found that. I guess I’m at a place in my Life where I recognize that it’s the Leaving and the being Alone that I have spent a Life time Fearing would happen. Now. Its time to be ok with both and just live in the Moment of what has been given to Me.

It’s ok to not want to float the river alone. Its just not ok to quit floating just because sometimes you are.