Thinking for the Holidays

Someone asked me to write my next blog on being alone for the holidays.

At first, I thought he was being silly and short sighted. Everyone has their family and friends that love them. Even if you aren’t in a relationship, I’m quiet certain you are far from alone.

Then the blizzard hit.

2 days stuck in the house. Christmas love stories are on every channel and work has slowed to a halt as people power down until the New Year.

It’s enough to make you loose your mind.

I’m one of those girls who are always busy. I fill every minute of every day with every thing. My “to do list” is my guide and I find satisfaction in checking things off that list. Life moves quickly and constantly; a convenient by-product is that staying busy means I don’t get many moments where I have to confront what I am choosing not to focus on.

Like a relationship.

I don’t make time find answers to these questions: Is a relationship important or not? Do I want to try and work towards one? Am I being hard on the guys I have dated recently? Should give them more of a chance? Have I walked away from something great?

I just keep moving. I assume that what I say I’m looking for really does exists somewhere and I will find it when I’m supposed. That I shouldn’t just try to make it work with someone I don’t feel a connection to. In the mean time, checking the boxes on my list is much more fulfilling than pondering these really hard questions that have speculations and no real answers.

And then I got snowed in.

No work to distract me, no clients calling for reports. I’ve wrapped all of my gifts and washed all my clothes. I’ve watched 8 movies and it is still 4 hours earlier than I ever go to bed on a Saturday night.

What am I supposed to do now?

It’s the stillness that makes it tough for people to be single during these months. Your world slows to a halt. It allows you time to think. It forces you to think. You realize that in some areas of your life, you are a rock star. In others, you are no further along then you were when you moved out of your parents’ house those many years ago.

And oh yeah!! THAT is right around the corner. The family dinners where they try very hard to pretend they understand why you are still single. Pretend they understand why you needed that next promotion, that second or third degree, or whatever it is you have focused on that keeps you from figuring out the love thing. They pretend that they get why that last guy wasn’t the one; and the truth is they don’t. They want to understand, because they love you. They want you to be happy, and they just don’t believe you are.

Add in a few sappy Christmas romances and those “Every Kiss begins with K” commercials and its enough to make you pull your hair out while you question all of the choices you made throughout the first 11 months of the year.

So to my friend, I’m sorry I pre-judged you. I was too busy checking off boxes to realize how much many of us can empathize with you.

We will find love when its right and it shouldn’t be seasonally motivated. Don’t let Zale’s convince you it has to be this month. In solidarity, I’m going to go erase all of the numbers in my phone for the “maybe I should give him another chance, he wasn’t THAT bad” guys. There might be several more hours before its safe to drive, and I don’t want to be tempted to give them another chance I wouldn’t even consider in the sunshine of April.

And don’t worry, Martin Luther King’s Day is right around the corner; it seems that the world goes back to normal then...

- Your BCG Snow Angel