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.