Sleeping Solo: One Woman's Journey into Life after Marriage (8 page)

“Single” is accurate, but it feels a little bit like
something escaped from an accounting manual.
 
And in my role as a mom, announcing that
I’m a single parent immediately triggers some combination of wincing and hero
worship.
 
People know that’s a
really hard job.
 
It makes the word
heavy, somehow.
 
Laden.
 
A solitary bearer of
burdens wandering through the universe of pairs.

Words of loneliness, heaviness, lack.
 
These weren’t the words of my newly
blooming life.
 
The last eight
months have been this astonishing trip into being…

Alive.

Joyful.

Daring.

Light.

Juicy.

Effervescent.

Brave.

Which is a lot of words, and I use a lot of them fairly
often to describe
me and my life
these days.
 
But none of them are my one word to use
for the land that has replaced “married.”

In the end, I solved this problem the way writers often
do.
 
I went for the thesaurus.
 
Started somewhere I can’t remember and
made my way down the strange, often meandering links that connect one word to
another.
 
It’s an occupational
hazard, this search for a word with just the right shading, just the right
nuance of meaning.
 
One precise enough to matter and familiar enough to communicate
widely and well.

Let me just say that there are some really crappy words
attached to the idea of being a circle of one.
 
But I found my word.
 
Savored it.
 
Felt my ribs expand in the joy of
rightness.

Solo.
 

That’s me.

Solo.

I love this word.
 
It’s a little bit feisty, and it carries whispers of daring flights in a
bright blue sky and a performer stepping alone into the limelight.
 
It sounds like a choice, and it isn’t
afraid to ask to be seen.

Embracing solo.
 
I’m a writer, and I know the power of
words—and yet somehow, having this “solo” word in my grasp surprised me
with its importance.

It helps me to stand in acceptance.
 
When I feel lonely, I know that’s part
of the territory of traveling solo—and I remember that marriage could be
lonely too.
 
I’m also learning to
trust that
this moment of lonely will be followed by one that
is different
, and that some of the beauty of the connections I’m growing
in my life comes from the contrast with the solitary moments—and yes,
even the lonely ones.
 

It helps me stand in completeness.
 
My family is a trio now.
 
One parent and two
kids.
 
That’s all we need to
be.
 
There are other layers and
constellations that make all our lives richer—their dad, extended family,
friends and mentors.
 
But I don’t
need to apologize to my kids for parenting solo.
 
It is not a lack.
 
It’s different than what I thought I
wanted for us, but it’s not a second-class choice.
 
I’m an awesome mom leading an
interesting life, and I feel really good about who I can be for them.

It helps me take myself less seriously.
 
I’m not writing the next great Canadian
novel right now, and that’s okay.
 
I
probably still dance like an awkward white girl, and that’s okay too.
 
I’m doing lots of things that stretch my
comfort zone or downright toss it out the window.
 
I’m taking more time to play and to play
hooky, to be silly, to waste time.
 
I’ve arrived somewhere good, and it’s okay to enjoy it.

It helps me take myself
more
seriously.
 
Solo flight is a big
responsibility—and an awesome one.
 
I have needs—to be loved, to be seen for
who
I am, to be pushed and to be gently caught, to empty out and to fill back
up.
 
To be and to
know and to sleep and to dance and to breathe.
 
And all of those things are vital parts
of the complex, beautiful energy that mostly keeps this life of mine
airborne.
 
Taking good care of all
that matters.

I matter.
 

Yup
.
 
I’m embracing solo for all that
it’s
worth.

Yeah, yeah, but what about sex?
 
I
guess I can’t get out of
here without talking about that one, huh?

I remember when my last long, important relationship
ended.
 
It was much less dramatic,
much less dire.
 
But oh, did it
leave me needy.
 
I felt lonely in my
bed at night, starved for touch, and sad about the impending decades of
shriveling from lack of sex.

Part of me kind of expected that whole deal to happen again.

It hasn’t.
 
I
love my solo bed, I get touched and hugged (and climbed on!) plenty by my kids,
I’ve found other ways to feel alive in my body.

And I have a really good vibrator.

That was a big step for me, believe it or not.
 
Not the vibrator, although my new one is
way sexier than the old one that looked like a runaway from a bad seventies
sitcom.
 
It wasn’t a stretch to
trust that I can take care of my own needs for a good,
ripply
orgasm—I’m one of those people who has done that since I can remember, a
basic life skill that I somehow managed to actually learn early and well.

The big step for me
was believing
maybe that could be enough.

That maybe sleeping solo, heck, pleasuring solo, is a choice
I don’t have to apologize for.

Sex is complicated.
 
It comes packaged together with another human being who has needs and
thoughts and wishes that need to be navigated and understood and met, at least
some of the time.
 
I’m already solo
parenting and working and having a lot of fun discovering me.
 
All those things use up lots of
energy—and my energy isn’t bottomless.

I don’t want a romantic relationship right now.
 
And I’m pretty sure my introverted self
is not going to find casual hookups for sex very appealing, although I try to
keep an open mind.

I don’t feel shriveled up right now, and I haven’t had sex
in eight months.
 
I have yummy
massages, and music that makes my soul rumble, and some really excellent
chocolate.
 
Friends to be intimate
with, other friends to dance with.
 
I can feel sexy any time I want to—with no strings attached.
 

It feels like a pretty great deal.

Maybe that will change, and one day I will want to do the
work of integrating what my body wants and needs with another
person who has wants and needs of their
own.
 
But I can also imagine living the way I
am for a very long time—and not feeling at all like it’s a second-class
choice.

Even if the only person who touches my
sexy parts far into the future is me.

Yeah, I said it.

I like sex just fine—but here in my forties, it just
doesn’t have the same place of priority in my life that it had twenty years
ago.
 
I don’t want to make big life
choices when what I really need is an orgasm or two.
 

Yup
, I’m a little gun shy.
 
I don’t want to upend my kids’ lives
again—or mine.
 

But mostly, there is something delicious and refreshing and
kind of exciting about being able to have an orgasm every day for a week if I
want to—or to tuck my vibrator in the drawer and watch a movie
instead.
 
There’s nobody to please
but me, and right now, that’s a pretty sweet deal.

Just in case you
thought we were done with the bed.
 
The cool part of my journey began with a
bed, and it continues to coalesce there, and to find new fuel.

I mean that in a really practical way.
 
I get way better sleep when it’s just
me.
 
I didn’t expect that.
 
Somehow I thought my solitary bed would
be the place I would miss my married life the most.
 
Where the
lonelies
would creep out of the dark and come find me, and where the need to be touched,
to roll over and snuggle up against security, would toss little poisoned arrows
at my brave new life.

Ha.
 
No.

I revel in sleeping alone.
 
It’s me, thirty square feet of gorgeous,
unoccupied space, and silence.
 
I
sleep naked, because my sheets are just that delicious.
 
I sleep with my really
squooshy
duvet, even in summer, because if I’m too hot, I
can just open my window.
 
I put my
pillows where I like them, sprawl out in whatever direction feels happy in the
moment, and generally indulge my every sleepy whim.

A good portion of my waking hours, I’m a mom—usually,
it’s not me who’s being indulged.
 
And back in those good old married days, bed was kind of a complicated
place too.
 
One with needs that
weren’t
just mine and a complex soup of stuff that I didn’t
really name for the weight
it was until it went away.

I get to be selfish here, for eight blissful hours a night.

It’s here that the engine of my new life gets stoked.
 

I haven’t been this well rested in a decade.
 
And let me tell you how many brain
neurons come back online when I’m getting enough sleep.
 
As I try to navigate my here and now
while stepping gracefully around most of the shards of my dead marriage, a good
night’s sleep is one of my very best secret weapons.

I called this little essay of mine
Sleeping Solo
, because in many ways, my bed is where this place of
embracing my new life began.
 
I
don’t live solo—nobody with two kids and a lovely circle of friends can
say that.
 
I sometimes choose to be
solitary, and sometimes choose to hang out in the thick of things.
 
But I sleep alone.
 
Cheerfully and with
great pleasure, and with optimism for the long term.

I don’t know where this ends, just yet.
 
But sometimes we can’t wait for the
nice, neat conclusion of things to decide how we choose to live.

And the message that has been beaming loud and clear into
every cell of my body lately is that I don’t have to do this to the beat of
anyone else’s drummer.
 
I like
sleeping solo, nestled by four teal walls in my bed.
 
I like
who
I am
when I do, and I like where this life of mine is headed.

My ribs were right.
 
I’ve got this.

Author note.
 
Thank you for hanging
out with my words a while.
 
I
hope you enjoyed them, and if you feel a sudden urge to paint something
screaming teal, I say go for it!

I have no idea if I will be putting out
Sleeping Solo, Year Two
, but if I do, and if you’d like to know
about it, Audrey Faye’s new releases list can be found at
audreyfayewrites.com
.
 
Signing up probably means I’ll let you
know when
Lesbian Assassins
is out,
too :).