Week 0: Introduction

From the time I was a little girl, I knew what my small world expected from me: marry a nice, white, Christian man and have a beautiful, Godly family with him. Ideally, I was to do this in the small town I had been raised in and at the only church I had ever known. These were the terms and conditions of my life as laid out by those in power around me and I knew early on that I was ill-equipped to naturally live into this supposedly God-ordained calling on my life. This opinion of myself was confirmed by those around me on numerous occasions. 

For a fair portion of my childhood, I was a part of a friend group of 5 girls. At one point, another girl and I wound up discussing in what order we were likely to get married. We agreed on who would get married first, disagreed on the middle three, and agreed that I would be the last woman standing. As I entered junior high, my self-esteem hit an all time low - a common story, especially for a strong-willed, borderline plus size, anxious 13 year old who’d grown up in a purity culture. During this time, I remember making the comment on several occasions that “if I can’t get a man with my looks, at least I can get him with my baking” - no one contradicted my statement. 

Throughout high school and college, I became the queen of ambiguous situations. I would “talk” to someone for an extended period of time, blur the lines of what was friendship and what was more, have some sort of loosely defined casual agreement, like or be liked by someone but ultimately not invest in/commit to a “real” relationship, or some other strange amalgamation of these things. 

That is how I arrived at my first “real” relationship a year and a half after graduating with my BA. It lasted just over four months. Before I say how this break-up left me, let me say this: I don’t regret the relationship and I am incredibly grateful for my ex. He wasn’t perfect, and ultimately we needed very different things in a partner, but he was good to me in all the ways he could be and I can look back on all the good moments of our relationship and smile. Now, when we ended things, I was very much a mess. I knew the relationship needed to end, and I found some peace in its ending, but I also found a lot of anguish. I felt like a failure, like I wasn’t competent enough to work things out and like I had failed at fulfilling so much of what my family expected from me and what the church of my youth had told me Jesus wanted me to do. It didn’t matter that I held different relational ethics and theological stances now - my religious trauma was alive and well in the wake of this break-up.*

*Note: My religious trauma is alive and well every day, but it was extra alive and well in the week leading up to and for several months after my break-up. 

In the months following the end of this relationship, I did the typical break-up things - well, as many typical things as I could safely in the early summer of 2020. I reacquainted myself with some of the people I’d previously been involved with, I casually flirted with friends, I started to have feelings for someone new (it didn’t go anywhere though), and I remembered that I genuinely enjoy being single. I also stared at the ceiling missing him. I dreamed about him. I wrote about him. I screamed “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo and sobbed to “Potential” by Danielle Bradbury and “I Don’t Miss You” by  Jake Scott. I also finally understood and felt the weight of his favorite song from our favorite singer-songwriter. And I slowly but surely started to feel like myself again. 

I actually did more than begin to feel like myself again - I discovered a new depth to myself. I saw new parts of myself becoming and unearthed pieces of myself I had buried for my own safety years before. One of my closest friends pointed out that my smile had changed in a good way - we chalked it up to the work of personal growth and self-acceptance. For the first time in a long time, I was completely unattached to anyone and I was at peace with it.

And so, about a month ago, when I found myself “talking” to someone from my past again and being asked on a date, I was shocked at the way my mind began to swim. It was like all the work I’d done didn’t matter. I was in the same space I was with the same person from almost three years before and I hated it. I suppose that part was different. And so, I cut that off and committed to something different.

I committed to a year of being intentionally single. A year of cutting off all casual agreements and ambiguous situations. A year of going after, entertaining, and flirting with no one. A year of focusing on myself, unpacking my trauma, and exploring singleness as a spiritual discipline. A year of asking: “How can the Church see and celebrate singleness as a valid state of existence rather than a layover on the way to something better?”. 

And so, that’s what this blog is - a  weekly reflection on my exploration of singleness within the context of myself, the Church, and society at large. I’m not sure where this will go, but I’m excited for it in that absolutely-terrified-but-woudn’t-have-it-any-other-way sort of way. This week is sort of a warm up week where I’m going to engage with different experiences and emotions surrounding relationships each day, but more on that and how it went next week.

Stay tuned, friends!