I mean, I don’t want to die alone

Two of my friends and I were video chatting early Sunday morning as we do quite often. You see, being single in your mid-life means that your weekends are very, very different than they used to be when you were married. So, sometimes we take Sunday mornings to get caught up with each other.

It’s kind of like brunch, but for baddies who already spent their fun money for the weekend and have to go run errands and do grown things in preparation for Monday.

Anyway, we were chatting along, telling the stories when one of us, says, “It’s so much fun and I wish I could do this forever, but I mean, I don’t want to die alone, so…”

And this is where we always go into how at some point we will have to settle back down, find the person to live out our twilight years with, grow old in rocking chairs together and all that good stuff. But this time, this time I stopped the conversation, because you know what Sunday morning baddies?

We aren’t going to die alone, we are going to die with each other right by our sides. Here’s the thing, this is just math. Either you or your husband is going to die without the other one unless you guys go out in a plane crash together or something wild, but if you have a ton of friendships that you nurture, and love and make important to you just like you would a relationship, then those can be even better.

I think this whole time, that’s been the problem. That women have always known that they need each other to make all of this work. Some of us are bomb real estate agents while others of us write our trauma on the internet for the whole world to see. What makes us great is that we know that about each other and recognize that it takes all of us to make magic happen.

But, when we are kept apart, maybe it’s hidden at home or maybe it’s working so tirelessly to take care of our whole family while our husbands play an intense amount of playstation, who knows?– What I do know is that when we are alone and not together with each other cheering each other on and being supportive of every single win and laughing at all the dumb mistakes we make along the way, we can never figure out exactly who we are supposed to be.

That’s the thing about all this purity culture and shame and all that. It’s just designed to keep us away from each other. Our shames keep us apart. Unwilling to share them because we don’t want to be shunned.

I think that maybe, just maybe the fear of being shunned is one of the strongest motivators to a lot of women at one point or another in their lives, and even if they feel like they’ve overcome that, sometimes, you can’t help but be that kid who couldn’t find a spot at the lunch table.

So maybe it’s all about healing your inner child, telling that kid that they deserve not to be shunned no matter what happens, and even more importantly that the only person who’s actual opinion matters is their own, and they can’t shun themselves without being super duper messy, so if you focus up on the whole self love thing, then it’s an easy fix.

An easy fix?!? What a true joke that is when it comes to all of this. Because we are all a little broken and why is it that some of us stay in marriages that don’t work, and some of us actually get to find marriages that work the first time around, but then there’s others who just can’t figure out what it means to find a healthy relationship.

Does that mean that the people in healthy relationships just got lucky or does that mean that their inner child’s are just doing way better than the rest of ours are? What makes that work for some people when for others it’s just an absolute impossibility?

I mean, I don’t think I want to die alone, but I also think we need to redefine what alone means, because having friends really freaking matters, and I don’t want to ever feel like I am not allowed to have them again.