PARTY OF ONE.

How do you know when it’s time to make a change…?

I’m not talking small changes, like hairstyle or eating habits.

I mean BIG changes — like moving, relationships, careers.

I am obviously exploring this for selfish reasons as I am currently trying to decide what my next step in life is — not career-wise, but…I guess, location-wise.

Even though I am realistically not thriving in my personal life where I currently am, I am not unhappy. In fact, I’m pretty darn happy.

I’m also pretty darn alone.

So, my question is — do I need to move somewhere new to try and broaden my personal life and grow that area of my life?

My personal life is currently comprised of writing, working out, dogs, cooking, reading, binge-watching Netflix, wine…there’s a few more solitary activities, but that’s the gist.

Boring? Maybe. But so very peaceful and enjoyable and stress-free.

But, by staying in my cozy, little apartment in Georgia am I…kind of remaining stagnant in life? Do I NEED to push myself to move to continue growing as a 30-ish, recently divorced, writer and woman?

I have no fucking clue.

I know how I ended up here. Kind of.

But I have no fucking idea where to go from here — or when.

I moved to Georgia in 2009-ish because my now ex-husband and boyfriend at the time was from here. After graduating from college, he said to me, “I’m moving back to Atlanta, you don’t have to come with me…but you can if you want. If you don’t, I think we should break up.”

What a warm, welcoming, invite, right?!

Ummm…no. But, somehow, I took that asshole-ish and painfully obvious non-invitation as…an invitation!

Why the fuck did I think that after six months of living together pretty un-happily in my favorite place in the world, Flagstaff, Arizona, where we had both gone to college, it was a good idea to move across the country with him?

We fought all the time, had zero in common, and quite obviously weren’t very compatible.

But…I was so unsure as to what the fuck I should do with my life (a recently acquired BA in English and working as a full-time nanny didn’t exactly leave me flush with opportunities) that I was ready to jump at any opportunity for someone to kind of…save me. Or guide me. Or just tell me what the hell I should do so that I didn’t have to make a decision.

So, I packed up my life, put my fish in a jar, put our cat in the car, and drove to Atlanta with him.

We moved into the home that he grew up in, which was currently empty since his parents had recently moved into a brand, spanking new McMansion across town and were so annoyingly rich that they were in no rush to sell their old house. (Insert major eye-roll here — if you knew them, you’d understand.)

I was FUCKING miserable. No friends. No job. No fucking furniture. NO FUN. In retrospect, I should’ve packed up my little Ford Escape and hightailed it back to Flagstaff, the one magical place that had always felt like home to me.

But, I didn’t.

Because he was a ‘good guy’.

He was working at his Dad’s accounting firm and would eventually make good money, really good money. He was responsible, educated, stable, wanted a family one day — your typical white, upper class, Southern boy. Just a ‘good guy’.

Or so I thought.

I saw him as the type of ‘good guy’ that I had always been certain I would never end up with because…well, I was me. I had always been a bit of a mess, a wild card, unstable, and irresponsible.

So, after spending most of my life flailing about and irresponsibly stumbling from one bad decision to the next, I could practically taste the white-picket-fence lifestyle that Chris potentially offered me. He was like a way out of my own self-created, self-imposed, unstable life.

So, I stayed.

Fast forward almost ten years, and Chris and I have now been divorced for over a year (never saw that coming, right? HAAA) and I live alone in an apartment (that I love) with my two dogs, supporting myself as a freelance writer.

And…most days, I’m pretty damn happy.

I don’t love Georgia, but I don’t hate it.

I do love my little apartment and my day to day routine.

I don’t really have any friends here in Georgia —at least none that I regularly see. They were all either ‘Chris’s friends’ that I lost in the divorce or have husbands and babies and are just in a different place in life than myself.

But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing — the solitude is good for me — good for my writing, keeps me focused.

Sooo…what’s the issue, you ask?

Well…I am now 36, divorced, no kids, and...I don’t know? I feel like I should be trying to date or save money to buy a house or…doing more ‘adult-like’ things? Pushing myself outside of this comfortable little life that I’ve built?

But here’s the problem—I don’t really want to push myself to leave my little, cozy, hermit-like bubble.

I don’t want to date. And I have no idea if I even want kids anymore.

And I know that I DON’T want to get married again. Find a partner or be in a long-term relationship? Maybe…but it’s certainly NOT a priority, or even an interest, right now.

I like being single. I like being able to do whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want.

I don’t have to share the bed with anyone but my Bulldog and she is a way better sleeping-mate than Chris ever was — she never complains if I stay up until 3 am binge-watching Netflix.

Isie

I can stand in the kitchen eating vegan tortilla pizza, guzzling wine, and watching Bravo any night of the week (ok, fine, every night of the week).

I almost never look in the mirror because — who cares?? No makeup, no blow dryers, no primping or worrying about how I look — it’s yoga pants and sports bras 24/7 and it’s GLORIOUS.

My mood is never impacted or changed or imposed upon by anyone else. I used to come home from teaching all day in a great mood — exhausted — but happy. Then Chris would come home — sullen, crabby, just blah. And suddenly I would find myself feeling blah.

Yeah, I know that is super co-dependent. But it’s just how I am — my mood is easily influenced by the moods of others. And Chris’s mood often SUCKED. But now, being single, my mood only depends on myself — which means it’s generally pretty damn cheery!

I can also spend my money (or lack of) however I want. Because, admittedly, I am, and always have been, bad with money. It was a constant argument with Chris, even though, together, we made well over six figures when we were married. He was a CPA, so, I guess I get his OCD-ness with money but…money was always a source of conflict for us.

Nowadays, even though I have far less money and I am still fucking horrible with managing it, at least I don’t have to fight with anyone about it — if I spend too much at Target on dish towels and twinkle lights and can’t pay a bill because of it, then so be it. I figure it out, deal with it, and I don’t have to listen to anyone yell at me about it. Hallelujah.

The list of reasons that I like being single goes on and on…but the biggest reason being, relationships/marriages are HARD.

Well, my marriage was hard.

And, I get that marriage can also be wonderful and you get to share your life with someone and you don’t have to grow old alone and you can start a family and all that warm and fuzzy stuff.

But…marriage is fucking hard. And relationships get old, stagnant, routine. What were once your partner’s cute, little quirks eventually become the things that make you want to stab yourself right in the eye. Repeatedly.

You have the same arguments. You push each other’s buttons over and over and often on purpose. You have the same sex. You start to put each other in these boxes, in these specific roles which usually leads to resentment.

Now, I do realize that I had a particularly bad marriage and not all marriages are like this. And that for many people, hopefully, the good parts help to balance out the bad parts.

For instance, having a partner through the hard moments in life, like a parents death. If you’re married, you don’t have to go through it alone. You have someone to lean on.

Well, in a good marriage, at least.

In my case, not so much.

After my Mom died, Chris was there for me for about 3.5 days before he expected me to get back to my ‘normal’ self; before we were back to fighting about the same things and having the same annoying as fuck arguments.

I got through my Mom’s long, drawn-out death all on my own. (Well, with the help of my sister initially, but after Mom died and I was back in Georgia — it was me. Just. Me.)

Going through that alone felt really shitty at the time…but it showed me that I could handle a whole lot more on my own than I ever thought possible.

I’m not saying that I handled it well. Ha.

But I handled it.

On. My. Own.

And I think, as a result, it has allowed me to be genuinely, wholeheartedly happy on my own.

So, my initial question remains — if I am fairly happy, and very comfortable, in my current life…how do I know when it is time to push myself outside of that comfort and make a change?

Anyone?

…?