It's been a very, very long time since my last post. I started writing because I needed an outlet for my story, I needed someone to listen and you did, and I'm so grateful.
Since the death of my fiance almost two years ago, I've had to learn how to live life as only one person. One person to pay the bills, one person to clean the house, do the laundry, fix the bicycle, take out the dog, pick up soymilk etc. Being one person is very time consuming, and I guess writing, my personal writing, was set aside as I struggled to rebuild my life.
I'm fast approaching the two year anniversary of my fiance's suicide, and I found myself in a very strange situation. I'm single, I'd like to start dating, but I have no idea how or when to tell a prospective date that I have a dead fiance. Hmmmm...
I'm a girl with a boyfriend, not currently, but in general. I calculated the amount of time I've spent as a single woman since the age of 14 and, despite the many different men I've dated, I was only single for about two out of the past 16 years.
Six months into my new life I decided that I needed to hurry up and date. Quickly approaching 30, I was so, so lonely. My life partner was gone, and I just couldn't deal with the world all alone. I dated two men, and quickly entered into a relationship with one of them.
At the time I felt like the third date sounded like a good time to let out my big secret. With the first guy it easily fell into conversation, with the second I blurted it out and he almost choked on his sushi. It's not much of a surprise that I wound up dating the first guy, until three months ago.
The past three months have been amazing for me. It's given me the time to do a lot of grief work and healing that I wasn't able to do last year. I'm sure singleness has much to offer me in personal growth, but I'm just not a single person.
I don't believe that human beings are meant to live in isolation. We are social creatures who need other people to thrive, and I am drowning in All-by-myself land.
I would love to go out to dinner with someone, to watch a movie with someone or whatever else it is that people do on dates. (And after dates, especially after dates.) The only thing that's keeping me stranded here on widow island is my fear of having to tell a prospective new man about my dead fiance.
A friend recently gave me the following, heart wrenching, bone crushing bit of advice.
"Any man that dates you, is going to have to date X too, and like forever. Most men won't want that so you should wait at least a month to tell them."
Fuck.
The truth is that I can't keep a secret for a second, let alone a full month. And I don't have the time to date someone for a month before telling them about the most life defining moment of my existence only to have them turn around and leave.
I'm a very busy, very open woman, and that's just never going to happen.
So how long do I wait? How do I even say it?
"Do you want to get desert?"
"My fiance shot himself."
"What?"
"Chocolate cake then?"
So I'm just not dating.
