The question

My little holiday has given me a real lift.  And I really don’t want it to end.  I am absolutely exhausted but I am riding high on the memories of what life can be like. 

Please don’t think I am naive.  Countless holidays are reserved for the few.  I’m talking more about that opportunity to be me. To just have to consider my own happiness and well being,  just for a few days.  To be free to do as I choose,  just for a little while.  

My children are my world and rightly so.  I would never,  ever,  change that. And I love my job despite its stresses and strains and the frustration I feel from it at times. 

The end of my marriage has left a small space,  void, in my life.  Before the split it was filled with anxiety and hurt and anger and frustration and grief and disappointment.  It was not filled with love and happiness and contentment and equality. 

Please understand me when I say I do not want my children or my career to fill that void.  They have their place,  a very dominant and important one.  That little space is for me.  

This week – amongst flashbacks of sunshine and laughter,  dancing and Flirting,  talking and  pampering – I have considered how I can start to give myself more time for me.  Regular time.  

What would I do? Where would I go? Who would I go with? 

All my friends are married with children.  Meeting up with them always meant meeting up with partners and children too.  Pretty awkward now I am on my own. 

My husband was my only companion and yet that is precisely what he wasn’t.  I felt lonely and frustrated.  I often felt more like his mother than his wife.  

There are definitely things I can do alone.  Cinema,  beauty treatments (!), night school.  And I will do them.  I will find the time: I need to find the time.  But…   I don’t want to fill my little void with loneliness again either. 

So,  the question…   I have been asked it so many times already. When are you going to start dating again? 

I know that I am nowhere near ready to start a new relationship:  that I am absolutely certain about.  I am on the long slow road to recovery from anxiety and depression,  no new partner should deal with that.  Dating is a heart wrenching business and my heart is still pretty wrenched. Despite the self esteem boost that holiday flirtation can bring,  I am thoroughly disgusted with my weight and body. 

And then there are the practicalities.  Where would I go to meet someone?  Work colleagues are out,  I have no hobbies outside of my own home and I don’t particularly want to resort to trying to find a man in my local night club or pub like my twenty year old self. 

Some of you are thinking Internet,  I can almost hear you.  Been there done that.  Internet dating is a jungle filled with predators like the common spotted married man or the common stalking desperado.  Not to mention the not so rare looking for perfection so unwilling to get to know you.  Last time,  I met quite a few weirdos and liars and one man who I dated who was lovely but not right.  The odds are not worth it.  

I once read that you have to happy with yourself for love to find you.  I agree,  but no soul mate is going to come knocking on my front door and that is the only place they are going to find me.  

And I am second hand goods now,  not in the best of condition.  Renovation will certainly improve things but I don’t want to be an antique before I’m put back on the market.  I need to lose weight but I am just on the wrong side of depressed to truly care at the moment.  Ironic,  as a good weight loss would do me the world of good.  

So,  WordPress friends,  I’m going to go back to my memories and flashbacks for now in the hope they will spur me on to get myself out into the big wild world,  alone or not.  

Xx

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