I’m watching Love, Actually. Well, really I’m listening to it while I clean my apartment and put away four loads of laundry before finally climbing into bed at 11:40. I guess the best part of having two weeks off of work is that I can at long last stay up late and write. Most women would probably agree that the holidays are the hardest time of year to be single. Starting before Thanksgiving and running all the way through Valentine’s Day we are inundating with diamond commercials. I’ve starting calling it the “diamond season”, not altogether jokingly. Engagement rings, earrings, necklaces, tennis bracelets, watches, on and on for four months the advertising world is telling us that some man should be buying us jewelry and showering us with love. I’d like to know what they think relationships look like the rest of the year.

The other night on my way home I drove by the City and County building. Every year the city of Denver puts together a beautiful Christmas display. The whole building is covered in lights. There’s a nativity scene and Santa’s workshop. Traffic gets backed up all along Bannock as cars slow down or park to get out and enjoy the lights. When I was a little girl my family would come to Denver for an afternoon to go Christmas shopping. This was a BIG deal. Long ago, the Tabor Center was a great little downtown shopping center, cute stores, right on the 16th Street Mall. After shopping we would get a carriage ride around downtown to the City and County building and then back to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. The whole day was a treat. I remember thinking what an amazing city Denver was, how lucky I was to have such an amazing family, how gorgeous Larimer square was under the lights, how perfect Christmas in Colorado was…bundled under tons of blankets and dressed up a little for the occasion all I felt was love. Funny how driving by the lights this year all I felt was alone.
Someone once told me that there is a difference between feeling lonely and feeling alone. I agree. I don’t often feel lonely. I do, however, often feel alone. It’s not a feeling I really enjoy. I long for the day when I can cuddle up with the man of my dreams in front of the fireplace after a long day of Christmas shopping and celebrating and wrapping and baking and just settle into each other’s arms.
Being single during the holidays seems to be multiplied under the strain of the commercials, the happy couples and families everywhere, the lights, the carriages, the music, the parties where my parents friends actually have the gall to ask me why it is that I’m still single. “Gosh,” they say, “you’re so cute and smart and funny and…why can’t you find a man?” I’m not really sure what they expect as a response to this. “Well, I am apparently not that smart or cute or funny” or “I’m just too picky” or “Well the men I like, don’t seem to actually be interested in me”. I’m considering wearing a sign around this year that says, “Yes, I’m still single. But I’d rather be single and sort of happy than in a relationship and miserable. Or divorced once, twice, even three times by 28.” I know too many people who are in marriages or relationships that are painful at best and torturous at worst and I do in fact know someone who is on her third marriage at the age of 29. None of which is really what I’m looking for! I want to know going into the relationship that it isn’t going to end in tatters, in tears and angry words. In boxes packed and gifts returned, in friendships lost and in time essentially wasted. So I guess what I’m looking for is a guarantee. Someone who can say I love you today and I will do everything in my power to love you more tomorrow and more the next day. Someone who will expect the same from me. Someone who will say, “You’re worth taking the risk of giving you my heart” and “I know my faith is well put in you”. Someone who won’t over analyze every part of everything that happens around two people. I’m looking for someone who can put their trust in me enough that I can be reminded of how to put my trust in other people.
I realize as I say this that before anyone can put their trust in me I have to trust myself. Which I don’t. Not at all. Something I’ve been working on this year, a lot. Don’t seem to have gotten very far. Well, ok, I do trust myself on certain things…teaching, my family, I mostly seem to have that under control, mostly. I just don’t trust myself in relationships. I don’t seem to have the very best taste in men. I don’t seem to listen to my own intuition. And up to this point I don’t seem to be able to actually change that. Which is disturbing. I know better. I know I can change it. I just haven’t yet…and I don’t seem to be in any hurry to do so. Yet I know that in order to find the man of my dreams I’m going to have change it. A lot of what I’ve done this year has been about changing my relationship with fear. I seem to have processed that on a very physical level and very little on an emotional or spiritual level. What risks am I willing to take in order to get what I want? What am I willing to let go of to find this man? Can I handle getting my heart broken again? I tend to fall hard, fast and without much thought. Which I’m sure can work in my favor, however in the past really hasn’t. Can I fall in love without losing myself? Can I trust my own judgment when it comes to men? Soooo many questions…and, for now, no real answers.