Day One Confessing

Day One: Make Your Confession 

This is a difficult revelation to share with  the world. No more pretending to be the safe, secure, self-sufficient, all needs met, I-don’t-need- a-man woman, and even more no more self-pitying I-have-to-have-a man-need a-man-gotta-have-a man blues songs being bleated into my pillow at nights when my silent phone mocks me.

This is day one, the day of confession for me. Today I confess that I am not happy alone, but more importantly that I am not happy knowing that my happiness is contingent upon someone else’s presence and approval. Today I do the first of seven steps. I acknowledge that I,though a fully functional person with an overall satisfactory life, skills to spare, talent untapped, smiles to share, beauty of spirit and flesh, am not content with solely being alone. I am unhappy being single and to say this says that I do enjoy and appreciate being in my own presence. Instead, I need someone to come and entertain, elicit responses, validate my worth and this is no longer acceptable. Day one, I must accept my presence as enough. Enjoy my presence enough to know that it is worth my being in even if no one else is there to know it. This is day one and it is the

hardest day on which to write, but then again this is only day one and I am sure harder days shall come on this journey.

This is my personal experiment to finding my own happiness in a single life, my single individual life, and not only surviving, but finding peace and acceptance that life goes on, man or no man, and that life should not be a

quest to find him. And yet I acknowledge that this is a difficult task, when women have been taught from a very early age that our man is our Holy Grail, in which we discover our purpose-mother, wife, giver of life. And to compound this, women my age have been fed this need from the time we were able to listen to fairy tales and play with dolls; yet unlike the generations before us, we were also fed a paradoxical philosophy in which we were told that independence was the key, education the tool, liberation and self-sufficiency. Two roads diverged in a wood one day, and I am still standing peering to see around the bend. So, welcome to my world. Hello everybody, my name is Kirsten, and I am living while single.

If you are reading this memoir in hopes to have a quick fix to your single state, I must say this is not another guide to getting or finding a man. And if you are looking to read a book that corroborates your being jaded and cynical, I say to you that this does not offer you an excuse for your reactions to being single. And lastly, I must advise those of you reading for an answer to the lonely nights of staring at your own phone that I do not promise a blanket solution to the loneliness of all single women, but rather this is my acknowledgment of its

presence and my fight to eradicate it from my life.

You are invited on a journey with me during my Seven Days, as I attempt to deal with my current singleness and the feelings of inadequacy that this state gives to me and while you journey with me you are asked to deal with your own reaction to your singleness. How have you allowed your being unattached to determine your worth? First step, acknowledgment.

Name Your Confession

For me my singleness has manifested itself as a lingering loneliness even when surrounded by those in my family and friends who love me. For you it may be an intense workload shoveled upon yourself to use as a barrier to dealing with reality. Or, it may be a hardened exterior in which you exhibit a defiant, confrontational attitude with men to keep them away from you. It could be an overly indulgent woman choosing to cater to her man’s every whim in hopes that this will gain his devotion. So, name your confession so that we can attempt to see it as what it truly is, a reaction to a situation and not a distinction in your character.

Before moving on to Day Two of this booklet/blog, allow yourself some time to contemplate your singleness and its effects on you. Take at least one hour to sit with pen and paper and nothing else, no children, no television, and no music, do not permit one distraction and answer the questions listed below.

Day One Activity

Your Single Symptom

1. Am I single by choice or by circumstance?

2. Am I consumed with thoughts of a perfect relationship?

3.Do I enjoy myself? Do I find pleasure in spending time with me?

4. Is my work ethic a part of my character or a distraction from my personal life?

5. Is my involvement with my children genuine to their happiness or a result of my own unhappiness?

6.Do I tell those who care about me that I am single because I “intimidate” men and if so, what do I truly mean by this?

7.Do I feel worthy of unconditional romantic love?

8.Do I think I am attractive and appealing to men?

9.Do I feel as though I have valuable thoughts to offer in conversation in a relationship?

10. Am I truly happy or is my happiness a mask that I take off at night when I am alone?

Take some time to look over your answers thoughtfully and objectively. Look to see if you can find your single-reaction. Possible reactions, but in no way an exhaustive list, loneliness, anger, depression, clinginess, overly-aggressiveness, over-sexualizing one's self (in dress and/or action), creating a sexless/matronly image, self-pity, etc.

Fill in your confession:

My name is ________________ and I am living while single. My singleness has manifested itself in my life through __________________________. 

My findings:

My name is Kirsten and I am living while single. My singleness has manifested itself in my life through loneliness.

The Mission

I have read a profusion of books written expressly for my digestion on finding a man, keeping a man, sustaining a man’s happy, maintaining my physical and mental self in the standard worthy of the attentions of a man, and all other concepts dealing with my need for a man in order to have happiness and peace. And I could say that all these things are foolish. I could indeed say that it is not needed for an intelligent, self-sufficient, independent woman to have a man. But my femininity gets the best of me, and in honesty I say that it would be a pleasant addition to my life’s otherwise mundane flow to come home to someone of the opposite sex with which to share and take pleasure in this existence, and who in turn wants just the same.

But today I write, instead, a book based not so much on my expertise in solving the “man” problem but a book that reveals some of the internal difficulties of this reality of living while single as a female. To some this is as dangerous as driving while drinking or utilizing some other heavy machinery while heavily medicated. I have walked in the haze of survival feigning happiness, garbing myself in self-righteous "I-don’t-need-a-man" self-aggrandizing strength. In turn at night when my daughter is sleeping and the phone lies silent though operational, which I know because I’ve picked it up several times earlier this night to check on the dial tone or to listen to the dial tone as I pondered on whom I could call only to hang up, I have day dreamed or rather visualized the day that my prince has come. And so, this book deals with this reality-- this duality that has been poured onto the twenty and thirty something singles of the Twenty-first Century.

The struggle to balance this single independent woman with my equally hopeless romantic marriage centered self is the conflict with which I must contend as I attempt to gain single sobriety and balance. In this memoir and workbook, I first deal with the fact that singleness is something that many women have connoted with some disorder, some problem, and because of our singleness often expresses itself in self-destructive thoughts or is displayed through actions that keep us emotionally inept. In this personal chronicle, I do what most autonomous women would not dare, tell the truth on living while single. And hopefully by the end of work, I will not only be living, but thriving and enjoying and journeying through life not to some blissful refuge of marriage but just with happiness until my prince comes—if he ever does—or until life’s journey ends, married or not. But fully happy, I pray, nonetheless.