The set up
It is Friday evening at the end of the summer, at the end of the week and at the beginning of my thoughts for my new blog. The last couple of weeks have been quite cloudy and wet weather wise and somehow my thoughts and feelings have picked up a bit some of the greyness too. It is not surprising when I think that during the whole of August, life has been quite intense both at work and in my private affairs and as things in the last week started becoming less tense, tiredness has kicked in and it has picked up the weather’s greyness.
Reflecting a bit more on my feelings, it will be misleading to put down my tiredness to August only. If I am honest the last six months have been quite a whole new chapter of adapting, coping, trying to make sense and making sure I don’t lose myself as a result of the changes that the pandemic has brought about to my life and all the lives of all those around me.
This is a solo walk of life that I have been taking in the last six months and as it happens when long physical walks take place, there is bound to be tiredness when you stop for a rest. It is natural and normal and when the fatigue is serious it is undoubtedly connected with a low energy and mood.
Walking solo
Last week I was struggling with my morning walks considerably. The constant rain and my need for more sleep have made me slip the habit of my daily morning walk for a couple of days. And when I didn’t got out in the morning, I felt such a great need for it that I stole time in the evening to escape in the canal. On one of the mornings that I didn’t miss on my walk but was literally dragging my feet around, I was desperately trying to switch off my thoughts from finding solutions to the various tasks that surround me but was miserably failing to do so. Neither the BBC radio 4 news or the scenery were any good at taking my mind off and each step I took felt like an autopilot was taking it for me rather than me consciously walking.
That’s one of the downsides of walking on your own and living an independent life. Your inner dialogue can be your solace and your enemy at the same time. When walking on your own your inner self is your company. If your inner self is happy it will be your best companion and it will be like walking with a friend or a loved one. It will allow you to observe the scenery and people and make comments about them, inspire you to take photos, it will let you dream and make up stories, it will talk to you in a positive hopeful voice. If it is troubled and turbulent, it will be impossible to tolerate and enjoy your walk.
It was looking as if I was going to miss out totally on the joy of my morning walk on that day when all of a sudden, rain started falling and I opened my umbrella to take shelter. Instead of feeling as yet of another thing to spoil my walk, I felt all of a sudden a sense of liberation and freedom from my troubled inner self. I took a moment to pause and I looked across the green field on one side and the river on the other and I realised that everything is going to be alright. Solutions will find their way to me and better times will come ahead is what I said to myself and I believed it. The rain, the freshness of the morning, the fact that I was alive and healthy and have so many good things in my life, they all came up at the forefront and erased my worries, queries and my fears. I felt at peace and recovered the happy side of my inner self. Even though I was on my last leg of the walk I was truly content to have turned the situation.
Just me for better or for worse
It is my own choice to live a single life and be independent. It is not because I don’t want to share my life with someone but because that is how life happens to be at the moment. And this is not about yet another justification or defending the choice of being a singleton. It is just about realising the better or worse of my commitment to myself. Contrary to what people may think, being independent doesn’t mean you are not in a relationship. You do indeed have a relationship, but it is not to another person. It is a relationship with your inner self that has it ups and downs in the same way as if you were sharing life with someone.
Admittedly, there are fundamental differences of sharing life with my inner self compared to sharing life with another person. One of the most important ones and probably the hardest one is that everything I do depends on me and how I do it. Friends and family are around to support me but for the majority of the time it is just me. There have been plenty of times when I felt desperate for someone to take over to do things for me, make decisions instead of me and give me a break.
The have been plenty of times equally, that I have been grateful for being just me and able to do things on my own without compromise or sacrifice. Time and time again, I’ve been grateful for having the silence around me and the privilege of having time for myself. I am especially proud that I take extra care to look after me in various ways; preparing gourmet meals for one, creating the perfect atmosphere in my little castle (aka my flat), taking care of my appearance, giving myself little or not so little treats.
Like a relationship with someone else, I have also experienced anger with my inner self and we have had our arguments but the difference is that the winner and the loser in those are one and the same. I also think that we are both tougher on each other when we argue compared to if we argued with another person, as we are both hard judges and quite selfish.
The best of times have been when we accomplish something together that felt like we wouldn’t or that we needed someone else’s help with. It is when I laugh from the bottom of my heart with my own jokes or stupid moments that happen in daily life or when out of the blue and for no special reason I find myself feeling merry and start dancing or singing on my own. It is also a good time when I manage to pick myself up and walk with a strong pace and steady steps after an emotional fall of some sort that has occurred in my life. I actually think that this is one of the strongest proof that I have a good relationship with my inner self, as normally it is the “for worse” part of a relationship that makes it or breaks it.
The epilogue
The restrictions of the pandemic have created a new way of life in everything and anything that we do, whether we are single or in a relationship. It hasn’t discriminated against the “single” box you tick when filling forms. I do think though that for those of us who tick the “single” box it has made us review how we feel about it.
For those who are afraid to be single or don’t understand what being single is all about, this blog is dedicated to them and it is just to share that it’s not such a big deal or unusual. It may be hard but not impossible and definitely not unpleasant.
Walks and Smiles 