9-24-08

Last year, my husband M and I moved a few thousand miles from home to a new city. The middle of nowhere. Ok, metro Phoenix. Ok FINE. Suburbs of Scottsdale. Here in the ‘burbs, I live alone with my husband. M has a full time job and recently went back to school, so I find myself spending a lot more time alone lately – more than I’ve had in the past eight years. I feel so proud of M for taking such a big, brave new step, though I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit lonely. “Unsingle”. Married, and yet alone.

M and I mostly see each other from Friday afternoon to Sunday night, with a bit of time together – albeit sleepy – on Wednesdays when we carpool. Oh sure, I have a part time job, so I get out of the house when I can, what his schedule and my body will allow, given my own limitations, but again, I do spend most of my days in a quiet house, with the cats (one of whom may be plotting our imminent death as this moment. . .)

So what does “Unsingle” mean to me? It means spending way too much of my morning on Facebook. It means watching old sitcoms at lunchtime, lollygagging to the shower after a workout, and rushing off to work the moment M gets home with the car. It means a late dinner when I get home, 20 minutes of TV before bed, lather, rinse, repeat. On school nights (a phrase I didn’t figure I’d utter until my mid-thirties), it means eating dinners alone, waiting for M to come home at 10pm, 20 minutes of TV before bed, lather rinse, repeat. And our sex life? It’s a weekend social event for the two of us. Weekdays are just too exhausting, unless you’re me, bored out of my head for 90% of the week, anxious for social contact, struggling to fall asleep – consequently the only time I REALLY get to spend in bed, next to the man I married.

But it’s not all bad. On the plus side, my dinner’s alone mean making whatever the hell I want to eat. It means walking to the corner market to pick up the freshest goodies for said dinner…and maybe a tasty dessert to indulge in, all by my lonesome (because there’s nothing more pathetic than a chubby girl eating a slice of cheesecake alone, or is there?) It means watching my ONE guilty pleasure, America’s Next Top Model (what? Oh hush.), without the ridicule, or feeling as if I’ve exiled M to the office. It means leaving the seat down, the lights off, and the kitchen tidy. It means having time to myself to write my meandering thoughts, perhaps a new, weekly chronicle of being “Unsingle”…