JUST ME

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It’s not like I crawled in a hole. (Think I did that earlier in the fall.) I just wanted to get readjusted to my reality before blabbing about it. Single again.

It’s fine.

I’m good with it.

It’s true that I’m the one who finally ended it but what does that matter? People always ask. As if it’s easier to be the “breaker” instead of the “breakee”. Sometimes I guess, particular if the “breakee” is blindsided and/or delusional. Not the case here. In reality, I’d say we worked in tandem over the final few months to chip away at what had initially shown so much promise. The fact that we’d each attribute the demise to different things only underscores how we’d drifted apart. Through a series of actions and inactions, the relationship imploded.

A year. More when you consider how deeply we’d communicated online during the prior year while having an occasional lunch or dinner as friends when our sensibilities told us a Vancouver-Portland romance was out of the question.

We risked a solid friendship in deciding to try for something even greater. I have no regrets about giving it a go. I did fall in love. Not everything comes with a happy ending.

In the days that followed, I struggled to adjust to the shock of The End. Did that just happen? What now? No panicked regrets,…I think it was the right thing to do, even if we could have gone on for months and years in a less than happy state. People do that all the time.

Reverting to Party of One, the practical side of me truly wanted to know what to do next. Would it be different? Could it? Or would I fall back on going through the motions of living.

It’s always unsettling to be alone again, especially after feeling so sure I’d found The One, a partner for life. Being alone is familiar territory. I’ve lived it. In fact, I’ve often craved more of it. But there’s a fine line between being alone and being lonely, and I need to consciously and consistently track which side I am on.

My favorite photo from my time in Stockholm, taken during

a solo morning jog just after a fresh dusting of snow.           

To be honest, at 53, there is also that nagging fear that being alone may be a fixed status. I don’t entertain any fancy notion that there are desirable single gay men in my area looking to date an old (or is it ancient in gay circles?) fellow with mental health problems. If you’ve read a post or two of mine from October, you know that I am dealing with depression again with some slightly different flavors added to the diagnosis. I’m Bipolar II, which means I am prone to milder states of mania (hypomania) along with episodes of crushing depression. I don’t know how to twist and contort all that into sounding like a good thing.

Still, it’s not all gloom and doom. Last month, I flew to Stockholm for a week. Just because. No one else’s whims or schedule to negotiate with. I have a strong urge to go back. On my own again.

For now, it’s the clear preference.