Blogging before bed

Yep, this is another one of those posts.

Acceptance

I realized something this Sunday, as I marathoned five episodes of the completely crazy True Blood, wrote a new song on my guitar, and read a couple more chapters of Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth: I was finally actually enjoying my alone time. I've mentioned it before on this blog, but I used to love my alone time; however, having nothing but alone time after my ex-wife moved out took all the joy out of it. It wasn't the TV watching that clued me in--that's pretty much all I've been doing for two months--it was the reading and the writing music. I haven't been able to sit quietly and read more than a couple pages at a time for over a month. And I hadn't even touched my guitar since writing the About Me - Singer-songwriter post.

Everyone is familiar with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. One of my favourite scenes in The Simpsons history has Homer burning through all of them in record time. In the past four months, I've seemingly gone through two separate cycles of grief. The first cycle, coming to grips with the fact that the separation was going to happen, consumed the last week of July and the first two weeks of August. The second cycle, which is the cycle relevant to this post, started in September and has haunted my alone time for nearly two months; this cycle was about me coming to terms with being alone.

You could argue that the second cycle was just an extension of the first, but I feel it was a separate experience consisting of all five stages. This blog post from October 6 (and the comment that follows) is a beautiful example of denial, anger, and bargaining all in one day; my brother was definitely on to something here. Any reasonable person knows that the stages aren't cut and dry (it's also easy to argue that the whole concept is bullshit, but that's not helpful to this post). You don't necessarily drop the anger as you step into bargaining. There is overlap, there is regression, and the stages don't always develop in the same order.

The second cycle's depression really hit me hard late in October, right around this somewhat deceptively upbeat blog post from October 20. I kept myself sane with fun distractions: TV, homebrewing, and curling. On Sunday the 25th, I managed to distract myself by watching nearly 12 hours of entertaining TV in a row, but as soon as I had no TV left to distract, I found myself sinking back into despair unlike anything I have ever known. Going to bed alone with nothing but depressing thoughts was completely awful and very distressing. Much of the last two weeks in October was nearly unbearable at home and at work. I couldn't even bring myself to blog about it, because I was struggling to put into words what exactly was going on.

With time comes acceptance. And with acceptance comes understanding. I'm not sure exactly when the change happened, and there is certainly no specific reason, but what is important is that it has happened. One of the early clues came mid-week last week when I was able to just sit and listen to music, rather than needing a more active distraction for my mind. For the last few days, I haven't felt any of the distress and despair that dominated my mind throughout October. I still have worries about the future and frustrations about the here and now, but it doesn't matter nearly as much anymore.

I have come to accept my alone time as a good thing. It's a big fucking relief!

What do you mean there's a completely free online dating site that nearly everyone uses?!?

I just learned yesterday about PlentyOfFish. This is a completely free online dating site created and maintained by one guy in Vancouver. No bullshit subscriptions are required for anything. And unlike other free classifieds options, the look and feel and features are nearly as good as the paid sites. And nearly every single person I've communicated with on the other paid sites is listed there for free. Fuck me! Well, at least I know about it now and can save my money in the future...