Before the rest of my guests arrived for the unicorn-themed party I threw for myself last weekend, two of my closest friends appeared at my door to help me prep and to present me with a few hostess gifts. One of the boxes contained a festive trio of spices. While I inspected them, my friends explained their purpose with the affectionate bluntness that only a pair of Scorpios can offer.
“So you can start cooking real meals for yourself again,” said one.
“You ate frozen pizza three times last week,” said the other.
I’m sure I turned several colors as I mumbled a thank you and set the box down on my counter. It went without saying that I’d devoured each flat, cardboardy pizza in entirety on three separate days, leaving no leftovers and considering that and my breakfast Slim-Fast shakes to be sufficient for my daily nutrition. I wanted to protest and explain that I did occasionally cook for myself, but they’d already seen the contents of my fridge: multiple rows of condiments, a drawer of sliced cheddar, and several half-empty bottles of alcohol.
The truth is, I’ve only truly cooked when I’ve had company in the past three months. Otherwise, I’ve been falling back on my old bachelor habit of relying on frozen food and raw carrots for almost every meal.
And that’s not the only habit that’s been returning now that I’m solo again. Now that my free time is entirely my own, there’s nothing to stop me from staying up all night obsessively editing my latest drafts, or wasting entire Sunday afternoons binge-watching The Tick on Amazon. I can indulge in all the things that would drive a companion crazy, like alternating watching five minutes of a movie with reading five pages of my homework, or sing-narrating my entire laundry process. With no one to break up the routine, I repeat the same schedule every day, like an NPC in the blandest open world video game you’ve ever played. I may shake things up for a weekend adventure (usually prompted by someone else), but otherwise, I stay on my little track, blurring time via repetition.
In short, I’m functional but a bit off-kilter, like an abandoned robot trying to make meaning out of obsolete processes. Which sounds kinda sad now that I’ve typed it out, but it’s also the plot of Wall-E, so it’s probably fine.
For the most part, I enjoy the solitude and control of having space and time to myself. I’m not prone to loneliness and I excel at entertaining myself. As a kid, I imagined adulthood very much like this: solitary but not sad. Lord of my own private castle, attended by a small fleet of animal companions. Things could be much worse.
But then there are nights that are too cold and silent for me to find healing in. I fill my home with music and podcasts so I don’t have to endure the emptiness of those evenings, but that’s the emotional equivalent of putting a band-aid over the stub of a missing finger.
Luckily, I learned this lesson some time ago and have been deliberately applying it now:
Reach Out
It took me a long, long time to wrap my head around this one, despite a lifetime of supportive friends/family members and a massive archive of research that supports how emotionally, psychologically, and physically vital it is to nurture social bonds.
I’ve talked about this a lot: I’m an anxious little goblin. I’m irreconcilably weird. I am neurologically impaired when it comes to facial recognition. My brain has a lot going on it in that makes socializing uncomfortable, but I’ve worked hard to address my insecurities and forgive myself for my inevitable blunders.
I am so, so grateful that my hard work allowed me to reach out after my divorce and that I had so many people willing to listen to me and help.
Even though I shut a lot of those people out during my marriage’s decline.
I screwed up. I got scared and doubled down on my most intimate, most legally and emotionally committed relationship. I didn’t want to embarrass Kelsey (or myself) by talking to “outsiders” about what was going wrong, what was hurting me. I didn’t want to burden anyone with my suffering. I didn’t want to hear the people I loved telling me that my efforts to reanimate a dead relationship by conducting electricity through my own body like a mad scientist from a 1940s horror flick were futile and foolish.
This, of course, made it all the more traumatic when the actual separation occurred with the suddenness and shock of a beheading, my head cleaved from my shoulders with altogether too much ease, like the act of discarding me was as effortless as passing a knife through warm butter. It felt like all the love and trust I thought I’d been pouring into our marriage had been sucked through a black hole instead, leaving me hollow-chested and headless in my empty house.
(How embarrassing.)
Fortunate, then, that rather than mounting a red-eyed steed and haunting Sleepy Hollow in search of vengeance, I corrected my mistake of self-isolation and reached back out to my loved ones.
Our relationships are shields. Our true friendships are mystical healing pods (you know, like in Voltron). There is so much power in the simple act of listening to and understanding another human being. That’s why reaching out is such potent medicine.
I’m not always good at taking my medicine. As much as I’m working to accept myself, warts and all, I still fear making a fool of myself in front of others. But it’s not fair to leave all the work of reaching out to my friends. I have to remind myself to text first sometimes, or follow up on a situation one of my besties is going through, or schedule the next session for my D&D campaign, even when I’m scared of being a crappy DM.
Which is part of why I threw a goofy party for myself last week, despite my anxiety. I wanted to reach out and put some sunshine back into my life and (hopefully) the lives of my friends. We decorated unicorn headbands, ate unspeakable quantities of snacks, and played dumb games together for a few hours. It was nice. I want to throw more events like that, random excuses to get the gang together (a daunting task for all us busy adults).
I’m grateful for everyone who has responded to my attempts to connect. Whether by cheering me up with nonsensical memes or including me on random excursions or checking in to make sure I’m eating vegetables, I know I have a wonderful band of people looking out for me.
My heart is still broken. I don’t know if I still have access to the depths of love and trust that I used to take for granted within myself. But in order to keep finding wonder in the world, I have to keep reaching. So I’ll continue trying my best, connecting to the people I love, and cooking meals for myself again, maybe even with vegetables.