Maybe he was hit by a bus....

"We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?" --David Foster Wallace

I've had the strangest, most random feeling of loneliness the past few days. Why it started, who knows. Maybe it's because I look around and see the world moving forward while I feel trapped, shackled in my emotional prison. Maybe it's because I realized that this time last year, I was sitting in an empty house waiting for a husband who was never coming home...not because of some noble cause, but because he was too weak to fight for our family or because he just didn't love me anymore or because he didn't like what I made for dinner. Who knows why he decided I was no longer worth coming home to.

Part of this feeling probably has to do with my obsession with Christmas. Let me explain. I looked at the calendar and realized that there are less than 100 days til Christmas....87, to be exact. This means I am racing the clock to get everything done. We take Christmas very seriously where I'm from. It requires much planning and preparation. When I realized this, my next thought was, "Oh crap, I'm gonna be 31 the day after Christmas!" Believe it or not, I did not really struggle with my 30th birthday. I think I was so glad to be alive and to be surviving what I was going through that my age was the least of my concerns. This year, it's just another reminder that I'm alone. I'll spend the holidays with my family that are traveling here. We'll laugh and reminisce and make some great memories. Then I will get in my truck and go home, alone.

Never in a million years did I ever imagine that I would be divorced at the age of 30. Somehow I always thought that I'd be married and have a wonderful job that I love, a beautiful home, 2.5 perfect children, and a golden retriever in the white-picket-fenced yard. Every girl's dream, right? Instead, I'm living with my dad waiting for my house to sell so I can afford an apartment

Even as I'm writing this, I realize that this loneliness is not the kind that comes merely from being alone. I've been alone before. I was 26 when I got married, for goodness sake. I'm ok with not being in a relationship. My time is not spent pining away like a princess in a tower waiting to be rescued. This loneliness is the kind that stems from rejection and abandonment, the kind that makes you question if you will always be alone because you aren't good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or....well, ANYTHING enough. This loneliness comes from questioning if this is a permanent state of affairs.

Maybe my prince charming doesn't have GPS and won't ask for directions. I read that on a bumper sticker and laughed hysterically, until I really thought about it. What if it's true? What if my ex really was my one and only and he decided I wasn't worth it and now I'm destined to live my the rest of my life alone? My mind reels at the repercussions of not having a husband, a family. It means that one day I will be old and there will be no one to come visit me at the nursing home. I'll die alone and have to depend on my brother to take care of my funeral. My only hope is that Jason outlives me so that he can step in and make sure that my send off is the fabulous affair that it should be. Most of all, I'm afraid that when I die, I won't be missed because I have no one to love me.

Don't get me wrong, I am loved. I have my family and my friends. But I don't have that one person in the world to whom I am the whole world; the person who would question if he could go on without me.

I had that once. I may never have that again.