Sleeping Solo: One Woman's Journey into Life after Marriage

by Audrey Faye

  I don’t remember how I tripped across the website of one of the local 5 Rhythms dance teachers. I do remember it was when the muddy, uncomfortable, seed-cracking days of early spring were giving way to early summer glory, and my body was very, very restless.

  5 Rhythms isn’t a typical dance class, and I’m not going to do it any justice by trying to describe it. So I’ll just tell you what it felt like to be there.

  The first time I went, I sat gingerly on the floor in the middle of about twenty other people in a big, dim hall, all doing various things—stretching, mostly—that had no pattern I could discern. Music played in the background, but it didn’t seem to demand that we do anything with it, although some people in the room were clearly already catching a ride on the beat. I waited patiently for someone to show up and tell us what to do.

  After about ten minutes, I was the only one left sitting on the floor. The rest were moving around, doing their own thing—but it was mostly beginning to look like dancing, and the music was getting harder to ignore. So I stood up and began to quietly shuffle around in the shadows.

  The woman standing by the music system in the corner would occasionally say things like “follow your hand for a while,” or “play with some clockwise spirals if you like.” And this interesting thing started to happen for me. As I felt out what my hand wanted to do, or had fun spinning around in right-hand circles, I started feeling the dance from the inside.

  The whole awkward thing is a non-issue if it’s the way your body wants to move.

  I have no idea if I looked like a dancer that night, but I felt like one. The music got to speak straight to my body as it moved from gentle flowing rhythms through more demanding, wild ones. And oh, the magic of the wild beats! Then back to flowing, and finally to stillness. (There’s a lot of actual thought and experience behind these rhythms, as you might guess from the name, but I didn’t know any of that on my first night. I just rode the dance wave.)

  So, two things happened. I fell into wholly unexpected love, and I had a new tool for hanging out in my body and for opening the gates to some of what I was feeling that didn’t have an easy outlet.

  Dear world. Make room for one more dancer.

  I also found a place to be in community—and to be alone. The dance sometimes moves into partners or trios or squares, and some people choose to remain solo at those moments. The other night was the first time I tried that—there had been more partner dance than usual and my body was resisting. So I flowed on my own, following a meandering stream only I could see, in and around the duos. It wasn’t lonely at all—more like the magic of being the blood traveling between the cells.

  I can be in a room full of pairs, be alone, and not be lonely. I can be connected in exactly the way I choose, and find welcome.

  I knew that before the other night—but this time, my DNA got it.

  The awesomesauce of friends. I am so freaking fortunate—and I know it. I have good friends who offer me cuddles and intimate conversation and the joyous pleasure of being seen and appreciated for who I am in this moment or this day or this decade.

  And before you think I’m one of those lucky people who has spent the last decade surrounded by a luscious tribe of people who care about me and who came together to create a soft landing when my marriage exploded… not so much.

  We’d just moved. Away from all my peeps, those of us who had survived the early years of childrearing and sleepless nights together and who stood brave and teary-eyed as the kindergarten teacher waved good-bye and closed the classroom door. It was a big loss when we moved, even if I’m honest and say that I felt more like a satellite in that solar system than a major planet. People liked me, and I liked them—but our shared lives held us together more than anything. Some of my closest friends were online, one of the many quiet consequences of being an exhausted introvert.

  When we moved, I’d resolved to find community on the ground. Real-life friends, not virtual ones. People I bonded with because we liked each other, rather than because we shared kids of approximately the same age.

  I’d made some good beginnings. And then, four months after the big move, my marriage detonated.

  It’s hard to look at a brand-new, maybe-could-be-a-friend person over tea and say that your life has exploded. Especially when you’re a socially awkward introvert who hasn’t done the best job of connecting with real, live people in the last five years.

  But this awesome, juicy thing happened when I did.

  I made friends. Like in an hour, deal done and sealed over tea. Terrific, honest, interesting friends. I didn’t let it all be about me and my mess of a life (mostly!), but I didn’t hide it, either. And the universe gifted me with a tribe.

  Of all the things that have happened in the last eight months, this is the jazziest miracle. And the biggest surprise, because I’m just not all that smooth and savvy at the friend thing.

  I’m an introvert, so I’m still moving slowly. Some of my friendships have hit that comfortable place where we know a fair bit of each other’s stories, and some are three days old and counting.

  But every single one of these people is heart treasure, and I’m ridiculously grateful.

  The message in the cards. My aromatherapy-massage person had a fun afternoon gathering a few weeks back. A bunch of cool people attended, and we got to make custom scent blends and eat ridiculously good chocolate—and have our tarot cards read.

  By now, I don’t even blink at the woo. I just laugh.

  My turn for a reading came late in the afternoon, and the woman reading the cards was moving fast and furious. I cut the deck and she began flipping the cards and flying through what they meant. It was a waterfall of words, and I didn’t catch all of them. Stuff about change and energy and grief and resurrection—things that made sense and aligned with my view of where my world was at.

  And the cards held one more very strong, very consistent message. Sometime in the next three months, my life would run headlong into tall, dark, handsome, and male. Of the romantic kind.

  My reaction was clear and instantaneous and full of laughter.

  Nope.

  Not now. Not any time soon. And maybe not ever.

  I don’t know who those cards were really for. It had been a marathon of quick readings for the woman holding the deck, and my introverted self could recognize another inward soul approaching exhaustion. Perhaps someone else in the room was on a path toward romance, I don’t know.

  I just knew it wasn’t me.

  And I loved, so very much, that six months after my marriage exploded, the reasons for my certainty were good ones. Not because I’d been hurt, and not because I was still working my way through the debris of my last tall, dark, and handsome, although both those things are very true. Not because I’d sworn off men and not because I was born in the unlucky line when the universe was handing out partners.

  None of those things are why I laughed, although all of them seem like sensible responses to nuclear meltdown. Six months ago, I might well have decided any or all of them were pretty good places to land.

  Before my ribs started knowing things. Before I started really breathing. Before my soul found its drumbeat and its dance.

  There won’t be any tall, dark, and handsome walking through my door any day soon.

  Because I’m ready to live with me.

  I want to live with me.

  The land of no name. The tarot cards and my dancing were a turning point—one that had me realizing that in a very real way, I’ve arrived somewhere tangible and good and worth celebrating. There was only one problem. I didn’t have any idea what this place was called.

  I needed a word. I’m a writer. Words matter—and not having one wakes me up at night.

  “Married” was a word I took for granted, right up until it wasn’t true anymore. It was one of the easy adjectives that described who I was, made it simple for people to slot me into the right country on their mental map of humanity. It was a word I was proud of, sho
rthand for something in my life that mattered deeply and named an important piece of who I was.

  “Divorced” is just not that kind of word. It’s all about who I’m not, a singular declaration that I no longer live in the country of people who are contractually hooked up with a mate. It’s a word that conjures breakage and separation and disconnection. A lack of something, or the ending of it.

  Seriously? That’s like describing my gender as “not a boy”, or my favorite desert as “not cake.”

  At this point in my life, I get to choose my own darned adjectives. I wanted one that’s a kindred spirit—something that offers people a one-word taste of who I might be and an invitation to lean in and find out more. “Divorced” is just not that kind of word.

  “Single” is accurate, but it feels a little bit like something escaped from an accounting manual. And in my role as a mom, announcing that I’m a single parent immediately triggers some combination of wincing and hero worship. People know that’s a really hard job. It makes the word heavy, somehow. Laden. A solitary bearer of burdens wandering through the universe of pairs.

  Words of loneliness, heaviness, lack. These weren’t the words of my newly blooming life. The last eight months have been this astonishing trip into being…

  Alive.

  Joyful.

  Daring.

  Light.

  Juicy.

  Effervescent.

  Brave.

  Which is a lot of words, and I use a lot of them fairly often to describe me and my life these days. But none of them are my one word to use for the land that has replaced “married.”

  In the end, I solved this problem the way writers often do. I went for the thesaurus. Started somewhere I can’t remember and made my way down the strange, often meandering links that connect one word to another. It’s an occupational hazard, this search for a word with just the right shading, just the right nuance of meaning. One precise enough to matter and familiar enough to communicate widely and well.

  Let me just say that there are some really crappy words attached to the idea of being a circle of one. But I found my word. Savored it. Felt my ribs expand in the joy of rightness.

  Solo.

  That’s me.

  Solo.

  I love this word. It’s a little bit feisty, and it carries whispers of daring flights in a bright blue sky and a performer stepping alone into the limelight. It sounds like a choice, and it isn’t afraid to ask to be seen.

  Embracing solo. I’m a writer, and I know the power of words—and yet somehow, having this “solo” word in my grasp surprised me with its importance.

  It helps me to stand in acceptance. When I feel lonely, I know that’s part of the territory of traveling solo—and I remember that marriage could be lonely too. I’m also learning to trust that this moment of lonely will be followed by one that is different, and that some of the beauty of the connections I’m growing in my life comes from the contrast with the solitary moments—and yes, even the lonely ones.

  It helps me stand in completeness. My family is a trio now. One parent and two kids. That’s all we need to be. There are other layers and constellations that make all our lives richer—their dad, extended family, friends and mentors. But I don’t need to apologize to my kids for parenting solo. It is not a lack. It’s different than what I thought I wanted for us, but it’s not a second-class choice. I’m an awesome mom leading an interesting life, and I feel really good about who I can be for them.

  It helps me take myself less seriously. I’m not writing the next great Canadian novel right now, and that’s okay. I probably still dance like an awkward white girl, and that’s okay too. I’m doing lots of things that stretch my comfort zone or downright toss it out the window. I’m taking more time to play and to play hooky, to be silly, to waste time. I’ve arrived somewhere good, and it’s okay to enjoy it.

  It helps me take myself more seriously. Solo flight is a big responsibility—and an awesome one. I have needs—to be loved, to be seen for who I am, to be pushed and to be gently caught, to empty out and to fill back up. To be and to know and to sleep and to dance and to breathe. And all of those things are vital parts of the complex, beautiful energy that mostly keeps this life of mine airborne. Taking good care of all that matters.

  I matter.

  Yup. I’m embracing solo for all that it’s worth.

  Yeah, yeah, but what about sex? I guess I can’t get out of here without talking about that one, huh?

  I remember when my last long, important relationship ended. It was much less dramatic, much less dire. But oh, did it leave me needy. I felt lonely in my bed at night, starved for touch, and sad about the impending decades of shriveling from lack of sex.

  Part of me kind of expected that whole deal to happen again.

  It hasn’t. I love my solo bed, I get touched and hugged (and climbed on!) plenty by my kids, I’ve found other ways to feel alive in my body.

  And I have a really good vibrator.

  That was a big step for me, believe it or not. Not the vibrator, although my new one is way sexier than the old one that looked like a runaway from a bad seventies sitcom. It wasn’t a stretch to trust that I can take care of my own needs for a good, ripply orgasm—I’m one of those people who has done that since I can remember, a basic life skill that I somehow managed to actually learn early and well.

  The big step for me was believing maybe that could be enough.

  That maybe sleeping solo, heck, pleasuring solo, is a choice I don’t have to apologize for.

  Sex is complicated. It comes packaged together with another human being who has needs and thoughts and wishes that need to be navigated and understood and met, at least some of the time. I’m already solo parenting and working and having a lot of fun discovering me. All those things use up lots of energy—and my energy isn’t bottomless.

  I don’t want a romantic relationship right now. And I’m pretty sure my introverted self is not going to find casual hookups for sex very appealing, although I try to keep an open mind.

  I don’t feel shriveled up right now, and I haven’t had sex in eight months. I have yummy massages, and music that makes my soul rumble, and some really excellent chocolate. Friends to be intimate with, other friends to dance with. I can feel sexy any time I want to—with no strings attached.

  It feels like a pretty great deal.

  Maybe that will change, and one day I will want to do the work of integrating what my body wants and needs with another person who has wants and needs of their own. But I can also imagine living the way I am for a very long time—and not feeling at all like it’s a second-class choice.

  Even if the only person who touches my sexy parts far into the future is me.

  Yeah, I said it.

  I like sex just fine—but here in my forties, it just doesn’t have the same place of priority in my life that it had twenty years ago. I don’t want to make big life choices when what I really need is an orgasm or two.

  Yup, I’m a little gun shy. I don’t want to upend my kids’ lives again—or mine.

  But mostly, there is something delicious and refreshing and kind of exciting about being able to have an orgasm every day for a week if I want to—or to tuck my vibrator in the drawer and watch a movie instead. There’s nobody to please but me, and right now, that’s a pretty sweet deal.

  Just in case you thought we were done with the bed. The cool part of my journey began with a bed, and it continues to coalesce there, and to find new fuel.

  I mean that in a really practical way. I get way better sleep when it’s just me. I didn’t expect that. Somehow I thought my solitary bed would be the place I would miss my married life the most. Where the lonelies would creep out of the dark and come find me, and where the need to be touched, to roll over and snuggle up against security, would toss little poisoned arrows at my brave new life.

  Ha. No.

  I revel in sleeping alone. It’s me, thirty square feet of gorgeous, unoccupied space, and
silence. I sleep naked, because my sheets are just that delicious. I sleep with my really squooshy duvet, even in summer, because if I’m too hot, I can just open my window. I put my pillows where I like them, sprawl out in whatever direction feels happy in the moment, and generally indulge my every sleepy whim.

  A good portion of my waking hours, I’m a mom—usually, it’s not me who’s being indulged. And back in those good old married days, bed was kind of a complicated place too. One with needs that weren’t just mine and a complex soup of stuff that I didn’t really name for the weight it was until it went away.

  I get to be selfish here, for eight blissful hours a night.

  It’s here that the engine of my new life gets stoked.

  I haven’t been this well rested in a decade. And let me tell you how many brain neurons come back online when I’m getting enough sleep. As I try to navigate my here and now while stepping gracefully around most of the shards of my dead marriage, a good night’s sleep is one of my very best secret weapons.

  I called this little essay of mine Sleeping Solo, because in many ways, my bed is where this place of embracing my new life began. I don’t live solo—nobody with two kids and a lovely circle of friends can say that. I sometimes choose to be solitary, and sometimes choose to hang out in the thick of things. But I sleep alone. Cheerfully and with great pleasure, and with optimism for the long term.

  I don’t know where this ends, just yet. But sometimes we can’t wait for the nice, neat conclusion of things to decide how we choose to live.

  And the message that has been beaming loud and clear into every cell of my body lately is that I don’t have to do this to the beat of anyone else’s drummer. I like sleeping solo, nestled by four teal walls in my bed. I like who I am when I do, and I like where this life of mine is headed.

  My ribs were right. I’ve got this.

  Author note. Thank you for hanging out with my words a while. I hope you enjoyed them, and if you feel a sudden urge to paint something screaming teal, I say go for it!