Uncommitted

I was going to write a piece on being alone and how being alone by yourself is better than being alone in a relationship. You know what I mean, right? If, ostensibly, you’re in a committed relationship, but the person to whom you have committed yourself is emotionally uncommitted…  that’s painful. It’s more painful, I think, than not being in a relationship, or…  being alone.

So that’s what I was going to write about but then I started to think about the words “being alone” and those words, taken literally, don’t really apply to many people.

I have four children and although most of them are now out of the house, they’re not gone from my life. I have friends, acquaintances, and colleagues in real life and anytime I’m feeling like chatting I have Twitter.  That’s not really being alone, is it? I mean I’m not Tom Hanks trapped on a desert island with a blood-stained volleyball. That’s alone. It’s also fiction. Most people are not alone.

So I guess “alone” is not really the correct word, but what is? Unaccompanied? Solo? Forlorn? Uncommitted? Single? Happy? Unhappy?

I think we’re all here to connect with other human beings in meaningful ways, but the most meaningful way and the way I think we all search for is that intimate, loving emotional connection with one other person. It’s fair to say the part of me that is searching for that is alone.

For now I’m okay with that because I’ve been in too many situations where that part of me has been alone in a committed relationship and I’d much rather be alone alone than alone together.

If I ever settle for being alone together, I should be committed.