Loss

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

For all the things I have experienced still being single - for all the ways my life is different from so many around me - one particular thing has been on my mind recently. One thing I have encountered and experienced over and over to the point of exhaustion.

Loss.

Loss of a potential future.

Loss of a friend as their life shifts so differently from mine.

Loss of a relationship.

Loss of myself in another. 

Loss of time spent in companionship with another.

Loss of a consistent life witness.

One of the hardest losses recently was a best guy friend. We were never more than friends, but this person had been my friend for the last decade, and shifted into the position as my best friend in the last few years when he joined me in my city.

As my friends and his married and started families, we stayed consistently single. With aligned lifestyles, and a solid friendship base, we naturally spent a lot of platonic time together.

But recently this friend met someone substantial. Someone truly great. And I found myself experiencing loss again.

Balance in new relationships is hard. I can tell you because I’ve lost more friends than I can count when they’ve met someone. And admittedly my attention and time has been monopolized on the occasions I’ve fallen hard for someone new.

It’s subtle at first, but more obvious overtime. The number of blue texts on the right side of the screen with no response on the left. Days passing before they acknowledge it. The shift in them needing to see if “we are free” to grab drinks or meet up. 

As our lives shift forward, with growth and gains for them, mine seems to stay still with a quiet loss that only I seem to notice or mourn.

It isn’t ill-intended or cruel. Who doesn’t crave being so swept up in another that, as one of my favorite Broadway songs “Only Us” states, “the rest of the world falls away”?

I know I want it.

I’m sure jealously plays a part. But as I’ve matured, it’s really not that as much as a longing. A hope to blend my own future with another. A desire to have someone consistently ask about my day. The craving to share simple moments like watching TV on the couch or cooking dinner together.

I know our friendship hasn’t ended. But it has changed. And it’s hard not to miss his availability and reliability that now feels its expired despite knowing it’s still there, simply different. 

As many of my friends find love later in life, the whirlwind of engagement to the arrival of babies happens in a handful of years. Things become serious sooner rather than later. My friend circle constantly shifts. I pour energy into maintaining friendships and also into making new ones with those living a similar lifestyle like mine to provide the community I need as a single woman. 

Sometimes it’s exhausting. A continuous game of selecting partners in which I constantly find myself without the odd one out no matter how many times I play. 

At the same time this friend began to drift away, my favorite couple in my building bought their first home and moved out. In a matter of weeks, the three people I spent a good majority of my time with all shifted from co-stars to cameos in my life. 

Combined with a loss of freedom and shifting to a work from home environment, the spring season brought a mix of challenges and isolation I hadn’t experienced before.

But here’s something else I’ve learned. With loss or change often comes space. More room to invite in something new. The time in between is hard. It’s often filled with lonely or challenging moments as the universe shuffles the deck. 

A month after my friends moved out, a left-handed, Subaru-driving, Ennegram 7 girl with my same name moved in. And with her came a group of incredible, single women who began inviting me to birthday parties and lake house weekends.

And slowly the “new” begins to fill the “empty.” Time and energy invested differently gives way to new possibilities, new passions, new memories.

The dance of being single. The rise and fall of friendships. The highs and lows and everything in between.

Or maybe it’s just life. Taking the good with the bad, enjoying the season or reason with incredible humans for those moments when our lives align. 

And maybe, even though it looks different, in the end I’ll walk away with even more friends for a lifetime. 

And that realization makes the losses more bearable. 

And it also makes my heart feel full again.