I haven't been to therapy in over a month.  First due to the holidays (the days my appointments are usually on inconveniently fell on both holidays two weeks in a row), and then due to the busy season at work and working as much overtime as I could in hopes of making a little extra money.  But one of the last sessions I had with my therapist, she said something to me.  Something she really had no extensive knowledge to speak on, and it was pure conjecture...and for all intents and purposes, I know she is most likely incorrect.

However.

It's the "most likely" part, and not the "fully without a doubt" part, that sparked something in me.  Something I didn't need to spark, because I can't live with it.  I can't hold my breath, can't wish she's correct, can't hope against hope that there might actually be a little bit of hope.

And that has made these past few weeks significantly worse.  Because before I wasn't thinking of him as often.  I hadn't necessarily moved on, but I wasn't as obsessive as I had been.  But her statement (and I'm sure she meant nothing by it) caused regression.  He is back on my mind every day.  I have had multiple dreams about him.  I'd say he's back in my heart, but truthfully, he never left.

I don't think I'm lonely.

I remember being 19, and feeling so alone and lonely, that I would cry at night in desperation.  Desperate to find "the one," because I just wanted someone to love me for me.  To want me, desire me.  It was around that time I read a book in the DTS I was doing with YWAM, where my perspective changed, and after reading that book, and my eyes being opened, that the extreme loneliness I felt previously was gone.

I didn't feel lonely for years after that.  I was content being alone; I didn't have any pressing desire to be in a relationship, to find "my person," or anything like that.  In fact, I was very anti-relationship, because people in my life that I loved and was previously close to, got in relationships, and I was left behind because I didn't matter anymore, only the person they were dating did.  And over my dead body did I want to become that person to the people in my life that I cared about.

Through a progression of situations and conversations with one of my best friends and other life things, I found myself trying out dating for the first time in my mid-20s.  I don't think my ventures were due to feeling lonely, but more so exploring and seeing what dating was about.  There were a couple of guys where things happened, but not really, and I was okay with nothing happening with them.  This was also around the time I moved away from my home town, out of what was a toxic environment at the time, and moving to someplace with a much bigger population.  And definitely not as many weird people.  (Yes, all the people in my small home town are weird, anyone who visits there can clearly see that.  I'm weird too.  It's whatever.)

After moving and finding work and building work friendships with my coworkers, that's when I met the man that I eventually married.  A man who, at the time, made me feel safe.  Made me feel seen.  Made me feel desired.  All of that changed, of course.  But that's not the point.

It was only after being married when the loneliness hit.  The one relationship where someone should never have to suffer in that way, and I never felt more lonely or alone in my life.  (Maybe my childhood is a contender, but I wasn't as aware of my feelings in my childhood - from what I can remember of it at least - so that's hard to say/compare.)  Or I guess I should say, never in my adult life had I felt more lonely or alone.

Being married to someone, feeling things deeply, trying desperately to connect with that person, making bids of connection, convincing myself I needed to stay vulnerable and not shut down in hopes of salvaging the relationship and marriage, repeatedly trying to communicate how I felt, trying to communicate better in general, wanting to get help from someone who could counsel us on how to see each other and communicate better and do better and what effort needed to be put in...all these things, wanting to get over the struggles and the hard times, the "for worse" times, because I knew it was just a season, knew it could get better if we both put in the work...and all of it failing, because the other half that made me one whole, didn't want to change.  Didn't want to put in the work.  Didn't want to make the effort that any relationship will require at some point in the times when things are hard.

The rejection I felt, the clear disgust and lack of desire for me as a person (as a woman), the fact that my existence and who I am wasn't wanted...not having to live with that now is at least a change of pace.  Not that I liked myself, either, but at least one of us could escape me, I suppose.

The point of all of this, is that when I was married, I felt lonely.  The opposite of what one should feel in marriage.  (We were never a team, though, so it truly shouldn't be a surprise.)  And now, no longer being married, I am alone, but I don't feel lonely.

I am still mostly convinced I only had one marriage in me.  There are thoughts and speculations in my head that I will not post publicly about this.  But in the email he sent to me a couple of years ago (dear God, how can it have already been a couple years ago), I responded and told him he has my heart.  And it was true.  And it still is.  Just because he broke his vows, betrayed me on one of the deepest possible levels a person can be betrayed, that did not make my love for him go away or lessen.  I can't show him my love, I cannot actively love him in the ways I did before, but I can still love him from a distance.  Not that that means much...and I'm sure it doesn't matter to him and he doesn't care at all, but if he ever needs assurance that at least one person out in the world has seen him and loved him regardless of anything bad he has done, he should know that person is me.  But I know that doesn't mean anything to him, and I cannot tell him or remind him of that fact.

But there is another part of me that just wants to not feel all this pain anymore.  The fact that he was able to move on to someone else so quickly, and who knows if it's still that same girl, or how many other girls have come along, but - like so much in my life (and I don't want to seem like I'm harping on this, but goddamn it feels so uncontrollable) - it is so unfair.  Unfair that he walked away willingly, voluntarily, and wasn't any worse for wear.  His life didn't change much after abandoning me, because I didn't have that much of an impact when I was in his life.  And it was "his" life, because it certainly wasn't "ours," it wasn't a shared life, because a real marriage is when the two of you become one; you are a team, you consult each other, you make decisions together, because everything that happens impacts the both of you.

There's that saying that to get over someone you need to get under someone else.  I am not that kind of person.  I didn't sleep around before (even with the high sex drive that I have), and I certainly am not going to start now.  But it seems like the only way to move on is to have someone else to think about, obsess over, want to be with.

But is that selfish?  Is that a real desire that I have - to be with someone, share my life with them, build a life together?  Is that a good enough reason to pursue a relationship with someone?  But that also begs the question, how could the next person who comes along (if anyone actually does, which is a stretch, let me tell you) be anything but a rebound?  Because in thinking about it, it seems inevitable that whoever is the unlucky person to be next in line after what should have been a lifetime relationship imploding, that person can only serve the purpose of getting over the previous person.  It doesn't seem like there's any realistic or possible way to move on unless there's some poor person who is the scapegoat of the first step of forgetting the previous person.  And call me crazy, but I don't want to have anyone deal with that or experience that unfortunate placeholder.  I don't want to put anyone through that, because that isn't fair.  So that feels like even more reason to not seek anything out.

My therapist said once "when we aren't spoon fed love, we learn to accept it from the edge of knives."  I don't think she came up with that on her own (a quick internet search tells me it's not her original thought), but the point remains the same.  I was not fed the love and attention I needed growing up.  What all children need.  And after a lifetime of being starved of the love and attention I needed, getting even just a few drops of attention and what seemed like love (at first), that felt...life changing.  It's why I say love makes people bloom.  Because at first, when I felt loved and desired by the man who used to be my husband, the world felt richer and more alive.  I was doing better mentally and emotionally.  I was more creative in ways I hadn't been creative before, felt more inspired, wrote some of my best things when I felt loved.  People who are truly loved, and loved well, will bloom.  (This is also how I know I failed in loving him well, because he did not bloom.)

I have lived over 30 years at this point not being loved well.  Not getting what I need or even desire out of relationships.  (Okay, that's partially untrue.  When one of my best friends and I lived in the same town, that friendship brought me a lot of comfort and live and love and I miss her so much.)  So what do I need now?

In a prior therapy session, I mentioned to my therapist what I did for my prior husband's birthday on the last one we spent together.  How I built him a fort in our living room, because he never got to experience that joy as a kid.  I made him a key lime cheesecake, which was one of his favourite desserts.  I bought him 13 sunflowers, because 13 is his favourite number, and sunflowers are one of his favourite flowers.  She commented "how well you were able to love him when your own cup was empty.  I wonder how much more you will be able to love someone when you find your cup full."  And she continued on saying how that may not necessarily happen in finding someone else to share my life with, but could happen in finding fulfillment in friendships and community.

I think I've mentioned it before, but I just remember feeling so desperate at times as a teen (don't remember my younger years as much, so I can't speak on that) to just feel loved and heard and seen.  Feeling like I had all this love in me that wanted to get out, that I wanted to love my family with all that love I had, but not feeling like I was accepted, so my love wouldn't be accepted.  So that love was shoved away, hidden and buried, occasionally able to come out and be given to others in my life (friends), but probably seen as intense and obsessive and I know there were a handful of times it came across as having a crush, because apparently paying close attention to people and their likes and dislikes and trying to make them feel seen is mistaken for liking them more than a friend.

Being married, I thought was my chance to pour out all the love I had been saving and hiding away for my whole life.  I thought I could be who I was, not having to hide anything, put on masks and pretend like things are okay when they aren't, reveal the less than appealing sides of me, and be truly seen, and still be loved in spite of who I was.  I was wrong.  I was seen and was criticised for it, told he didn't like being around me when I was sad (which is all the time), told he didn't like having sex with me because I'm me.  The love I tried to pour into him was...well, I don't know what it was.  I don't know if it wasn't accepted, or wasn't appreciated, wasn't welcome...but what the Bible teaches as putting your spouse first, laying aside your own desires and needs to meet theirs, the world takes and calls it "codependency."  That isn't to say codependency exists, but my attempts to love and sacrifice and support were seen as codependent and not for what they were.  Which, I suppose, what else could you expect from someone who perceives the world from a worldly view and has no idea what Love actually is or looks like?  (Another way I failed him, because I did not provide a good example of what Love looks like.)

The point of all of this, is trying to determine if I'm lonely or not.  I don't think I am, because I'm not actively going out looking for friends or company or companionship.  And as high as my libido might be, I am not about to go looking for someone to fuck, because the last time I had sex I was married and I cried afterwards on account of feeling nothing, and I'm not about to be intimate and vulnerable in that way with someone who isn't committed to me for life (much less risk pregnancy and other terrible things that can happen from sex).

I at least have therapy tomorrow.  Who knows if we'll get around to this topic/question, what with having a lot to process from not going for the past month.  But I can at least contemplate it on my own until we get around to discussing it.  Maybe I am lonely, but am in denial.  It could be that I am and I don't see it for some reason.  I'm hoping my therapist will know what questions to ask to help me determine if I'm kidding myself or if I'm truly content without anyone.

Maybe I'm only lonely for a specific person.

I guess we'll see.