Somewhere Between Contentment and Bliss. Single, Approaching Forty and Approaching Bliss.

“Are you dating anyone?” It is a question asked in innocence until I am found guilty of being without a significant other. This question knows no bounds and is asked by the dearest of friends and the strangest of strangers. Often it is followed by the cliched reassurance that I will find someone when I least expect it. They even hint at the idea that men my age are quickly becoming available due to divorce, but if their emotions are anything like mine in the months after the unraveling of my marriage I know now that it is best to keep my distance.

Almost forty, I know better than to be offended by these inquiries, but this exchange is all too brief to inform those that ask that this is not what I am looking for. At least not now. In the years that I have dated I have fallen in love, I have fallen out of love, chosen poorly, turned a blind eye, ignored my intuition, accepted the unacceptable and stayed for longer than I should have. I even chased a man halfway around the world only to return from where I came and when I have settled never have I felt more unsettled. I will not settle again. Now, as I move further from the reckless youth I once was I know of the things that I will no longer allow in my heart never for fear of it being broken, but because I have learned enough from my mistakes to hopefully not make them again.

Of course to be asked if I am dating is an easy question. People are not prone to dive into the deep end and ask what books I have been unable to put down or what it is that sets my soul on fire. They never wonder what it is that wakes me in the middle of the night or what song brings tears to my eyes. So they stay in the shallow end asking questions that are easier to ask than they are to answer. These other questions are the more difficult.

And maybe if they were to ask any of these questions, perhaps I might answer with this. When I was a young girl, I read a poem by the American poet Wallace Stevens about a woman alone on a Sunday morning contemplating her place in this big bold world. I remember the line that has stayed with me since:

“But in contentment I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.”

I knew after reading these words that somehow they were to define my heart’s journey and what a journey it has been. The years have almost doubled since I first read these words, but if it were possible to go back and speak to that twenty year old girl, the one who believed so much in love that she wished for it more than anything else, these are the things I might tell her for it is better to learn this early than it is to learn it often:

Never settle. Not for anything. Not for anyone.

Spend less time worrying, wondering, and looking for love in almost all the wrong places and more time on what fills your heart rather than what breaks it.

To be alone and to be lonely are not the same and one should never be confused for the other.

Listen to that little voice of intuition that whispers no oh so softly that it can barely be heard, that you simply respond, “What is the worst that can happen?” Listen to it before you learn what that worst is.

Be vulnerable. Be vulnerable. Be vulnerable.

But protect your magic and never allow anyone to strip you of your strength, your truth, or your beauty.

Love is not always a choice. We love who we love because our hearts are folded into the arms of fate to be held one moment and to be let go the next.

But often, to be single is most definitely a choice. A choice made with the knowledge that sometimes the path to happiness is not a two-lane road but a single, solitary track.

So do not rely on another for you happiness. It is like relying on the wind to carry all of your worries away.

You are the captain of your own contentment.

You are the broker of your own bliss.

But since I cannot go back, time will not allow it, I will remind myself of all of this now; proud of what I have learned along the way so that the next time I am asked if I am dating I will politely say no and dive head first into the deep end of my own heart, somewhere between contentment and bliss.

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