A Time to...

To everything there is a season...a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Okay I paraphrased. But there's a chapter in the Bible (and a once popular song to go with it) that talks about there being a time for everything. A time to mourn. A time to dance. A time to plant. A time to reap, etc. For the most part, I've mourned my singleness. I still have my rough patches when I get frustrated with being lonely. Usually when I get invited to a coupled event and either go alone or have to invite a girlfriend. I have some really close friends so it's rare that I'm truly alone and don't have anyone to talk to. But I do get lonely. This is something that is tied to having a baby but I suspect won't be solved by having a baby either. There is a basic level of adult companionship that I miss/lack/wish that I had. OTOH, I know that there are things I benefit from because I don't have a SO.  I can sleep in or go to bed late. My insomnia keeps only one person up, not two. I can eat cereal every night and watch chick flicks to my heart's content. Never mind that I rarely eat cereal, prefer action movies, and rarely sleep in past 7 even when I can't sleep or go to bed late. But I'm  a work in progress.

Tonight was one of those rough patches. I did, in fact, watch a sappy chick flick, and it happened to follow a conversation with a friend about why I'm not dating anyone. Essentially I've realized that I was putting myself out there to get my heart trampled on repeatedly. And despite having a pretty large wall up, the few times I've let someone in, I've been massively hurt. So the wall is back up. Call it self protection, but I feel like there's only so many times a heart can be shortshrifted. The movie was Sense and Sensibility, and I found myself identifying with the Miss Dashwood as she suffered silently seemingly not in love and never to get her Prince Charming. Of course, she marries Edward in the end, but only after maintaining stoic dignity despite her pain for most of the movie.

She is me. I am she.

And a part of me wishes that despite my plans to have a baby on my own, that Prince Charming will arrive and whisk me off to dance in the moonlight. But I doubt it. Truly I do. At this point in my life I'm not sure I trust my judgment in men, let alone trust my heart to someone. I've been burned that badly. This guy would pretty much have to drop out of the sky and sneak into my heart. Anyway I write all this to say that I realized that maybe I am still mourning, despite me thinking I was over being single. Maybe it's a progression rather than a finite thing. Maybe I'll never be 100% over it. But
then again, it's a feeling that lessens every day, every week. And I am truly at peace with being single.

So in the meantime, I'm dancing. Figuratively and literally. I joined my church's liturgical dance group after years of not dancing. It's amazing how fast it all came back to me. I'm not as flexible as I was in high school and college, but I'm not bad either. And I learned a whole routine in 3 practices when everyone else had 5. Not too shabby! And I'm feeling good ...or at least better... About myself. I've realized that I need yo be easier on myself. I beat myself up and over analyze quite a bit. It's really time to give myself a break.

So. Yes there is a time to mourn, but there also is a time to dance. I may not be done being sad over being single and lonely at times, but I'm determined to get back out there at some point on the dance floor. And in the meantime, I'll let go a bit and dance.