https://ldsblogs.com/22576/alone-without-feeling-lonely Fri, 14 Mar 2014 18:41:06 +0000 hourly 1 https://ldsblogs.com/22576/alone-without-feeling-lonely#comment-41962 Fri, 14 Mar 2014 18:41:06 +0000 http://en.elds.org/ldsblogs-com/?p=22576#comment-41962 Shortly before I met Larry, I had decided I needed to become comfortable with me and with being alone. I had my eye on a PHD and I had some reason to believe The Lord wouldn’t let me be married till I accomplished that goal. Since I was 23 and still working on my Bachelor’s that was quite a way off!
So I started taking myself on “dates”. Once a week I would do something for myself that would make me feel special. I figured I couldn’t expect someone else to want to date me if I didn’t treat myself well enough or think highly enough of myself to want to date me. Maybe that sounds weird, but I did something I had never taken the time to do before, I began to like myself. I had known who I was, that wasn’t the problem, and I liked the person I was becoming, but I began to really learn more about who I was instead of who I was working on becoming. I knew my flaws and I knew how I wanted to fix them, but for the first time in my life I could accept myself, flaws and all.
For some reason, taking the time to even just go to Barnes and noble to get a hot cocoa and a cookie and just sitting there and thinking, gave me the opportunity to love myself. I never noticed it till then, but I realized: how can I expect someone else to fall in love with me if I don’t love me?
Yes maybe some people think going out to dinner and a movie on your own is sad, but it’s not! I decided that if I wanted to go out to dinner at my favorite restaurant, I wasn’t going to wait around for someone to take me. I’d take me!
The loneliness is terrible. I remember the ache I felt deep inside as I saw friends get married, go on dates while I sat home Friday nights, as I watched couples in church hold hands, as my best friend texted me about how her husband had swept her away to the Grand Canyon to watch the sunrise the same day a guy I had liked for years came out, the times I would drive around my town because I wouldn’t stand to be in an empty house another minute. I remember loneliness. But every second of that pain has made me so incredibly grateful for every second I am not alone. And it gave me the opportunity to learn just what you talked about here. That while I was alone, I wasn’t and The Lord knew EXACTLY how deep that dark hole of loneliness was and what it felt like. And because he didn’t want me to ever experience the kind of loneliness he did, he was always by my side.
So rock on sista and go and do things on your own! More power to ya!
And come visit me! Because that would be awesome!

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