Tis the Season

Due to an undue amount of drama in my personal life, I have cherished silence and solitude like a boss! At the same time, I can’t help but be reminded about dreams for my own family. This is the time of year that grabs a hold of my unfulfilled relationship goals and serves me a daily fresh reminder of that of which I long for but do not yet have. It is called the Single’s Awareness holiday season. It’s a real thing. We’re in the middle of it right now. It starts with Thanksgiving and ends on Valentine’s Day. No two seasons have ever been alike for me. One year I’m happy to just chill and spend time with friends and family. Another year, loneliness can be the overriding emotion. Most years, it tends to be a cocktail of the two very conflicting emotions.

Single Person, what is this season like for you? Are you enjoying yourself?   And if so, in the middle of enjoying yourself, do you unexpectedly get bombarded with people and images of the family life you want? If you feel rejected or invisible, how do you survive the bouts of intense loneliness without making poor choices that feel good in the moment but only harm you in the long run?

People will tell you that the antidote to your sadness is to count your blessings and fill your mind with stories of other people’s lives whose are much worse off than yours. So dutifully, you grab a pen and write or you begin to think about your blessings. And after you’ve done that, does that exercise magically erase all the loneliness? H to the no it doesn’t. And that’s okay because that’s not gratitude’s job.

It is the job of gratitude to help us remove emotional blinders; it helps us to see the fabulous parts of our life that we would otherwise overlook. But it cannot and will not be an emotional replacement for loneliness. (Expecting gratitude to erase loneliness is like using whipped cream as an ointment on an open wound. Whipped cream is a genuine source of much happiness in life but its deliciousness can’t heal your painful life situations.)

So when you’re feeling lonely, if you can’t think your loneliness away, how do you get rid of it? Spending time with friends is a temporary fix. Parties, drinking, social media, dating to fill a void, sex, emotional eating, anything you use to numb your emotions—all temporary. So what’s the permanent fix? There isn’t one! If there was one, we would have done it already!!

The bad news: There is no “cure” for loneliness.

The good news: Loneliness is not a disease. Nor is it something that needs to be avoided. Nor is it something we need to pretend doesn’t exist.   It is an authentic part of life. In the same respect that happiness and contentment exist, so does loneliness. It is not a permanent forecast over your life; it’s more like a cloud that will pass over all of us from time to time.

A definition of loneliness that I like is: “the fact of being without companions.” By definition, the single person can be blessed with great friendships and simultaneously be lonely as they don’t have that one special person in their life. The married person can be lonely if that one special person in their life feels more like a distant stranger.

The moment my life became more consistently filled with happiness and peace was when I learned to not react to loneliness or any other emotion that I don’t like to experience. Misguided thoughts and bad decisions are born from coming to the conclusion that something is “wrong” because I feel sad. The emotions that I don’t enjoy will eventually pass if I am brave enough to allow them to exist inside me and serve their momentary purpose. And when something resurfaces, I acknowledge its existence, ask the Holy Spirit for guidance, comfort or support, and ride it out until it’s gone. Rinse, wash, repeat. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Dear Single Person: It is my hope for us all this Single’s Awareness season (and beyond) to successfully ride the waves of single life. May we not freak out during the hard times (by way of poor life decisions) and may we squeeze as much happiness out of our lives as we possibly can. Anybody with me?