Cold hand on the helm, eyes, and lungs filled with salty mist from rough waters. The sails snap and ripple like the waves in the wind.
And the sea is empty.
Save for my small vessel, soldiering undaunted through the tumult. Solitary and singular against the gray canvas of water and dreary sky, I’m the only captain of a lonely ship in a vast ocean.
Lonely.
Yes, I am lonely out here. Once I sailed with a fleet of fellow captains and their ships. But one by one they either made haste for a distant harbor or else drifted slowly off course. At first, I took little notice, for I could still see a few other ships cruising alongside me.
Then one day I looked up from my charts and realized that the last of my friends were gone.
And thus, the sea was empty.
Save for me.
Alone on the ship.
And suddenly the ocean seemed rougher, more stormy and unforgiving. The skies seemed to favor a constant gray mist. What happened to the sunshine? The nighttime is too quiet, the darkness is too deep. Some days I think I’m on course, but mostly I strain to see the stars and struggle to remember where I’m trying to go. I know that most of my friends turned their ships towards good things, that they’re happy where they are.
And why wouldn’t they be?
None of them are sailing alone.
Recently it hit me: I’m the only single gal left in my group of friends. That was a fun realization! Everybody else has somebody, and I’m that sad little person with nobody. Truthfully, I’m not the only single person left in my circle; I have one, maybe two fellow single peeps still with me. But I do not exaggerate when I say that every other good friend or acquaintance I know is dating, engaged, married, happily involved, whateveryouwanttocallit - they are no longer single.
And yikes, it is lonely to be the only one.
I do want a smoking hot boyfriend who will then become my husband so I can get one of those happily ever afters everyone raves about - not trying to deny that.
But it’s not merely the fact of my singleness that inspires such a deep sense of loneliness. It’s the fact that I am alone in my singleness.
Everyone else has left that season behind. They’re sailing into those sparkling waters of romance and hand-holding and starry eyes and kisses and butterflies. And believe me, I’m happy for them. Sometimes.
But they’ve left me. They’re in a relationship.
Me? I’m in a soloship. And I didn’t mind that so much when I had seven or eight dear friends who were also navigating solitary waters. We might have been single but we weren’t alone. We had each other.
I didn’t anticipate being dumped so unceremoniously into lonely seas so soon or so fast. It’s not like I’m forty-five and the only one still not married, I’m a baby-faced twenty-year-old for crying out loud. And yet it seems that everyone around me, regardless of age or stage, or season of life, have found their someone.
HEY GUYS. YOU FORGOT SOMEBODY. (Waves hands frantically and points dramatically at myself)
I feel isolated. I’ve enjoyed singleness in the past. I’ve briefly dated here and there, but the majority of my time has been spent single, and mostly I feel I’m quite well-adjusted to the solitary state.
It was easy to be happy where I was when I wasn’t the only one there.
It was at this point in the first draft of the blog post that I careened down an ugly rabbit hole, pouring out the painful questions this turn of events has dredged up:
Why has everyone else found love and I haven’t?
Why am I not good enough?
What’s wrong with me?
Why don’t I deserve someone?
I wrote on and on, spilling the hurt, the simmering bitterness towards the ex-boyfriend who made me feel worthless (relationships wreck the heart sometimes), the desperate loneliness, the anger I feel at being abandoned, on and on and on…
I’m still drifting.
Normally I don’t share this kind of struggle without having found the answers; solved the riddle. I have the answer. In this moment I’m struggling to be brave enough and strong enough to take hold of the answer and stand on it and let it change me. Jesus holds the answers, holds the mirror in which I can see my real identity, and yet in so many lonely moments I don’t look to Him or call out to Him for rescue.
He IS the answer.
I need to look to Him.
I need to let Him call me out of the boat.
And into the storm.
Into His arms.
As I said, I don’t often dive deep into the struggle until I’m on the other side, having solved the problems and tidied up the messes. But this time I want to share in the middle.
Not the hopeless middle. The ‘I know the answer, but I’m still struggling to solve the riddle’ middle. Because it’s okay to be there. We’re all floundering in one sense or another, and feeling like we’re the only ones just makes it worse.
So for you, my fellow unattached friend who’s feeling lost, abandoned, and alone… Everything you and I are feeling right now is real, it’s really hard, and it’s not going to last forever. We will adjust to this season. We will find our new groove with all our new ‘couple friends’ and married friends and friends who have forgotten what it’s like to watch a romance scene in a movie and feel both longing and disgust. We’ll learn how to manage our feelings of loneliness and we’ll remember to take our questions about our worth to Jesus. We’ll go on dates and some of them will be disasters and we’ll laugh and cry about them and move on. One of those dates may go really well and then, who knows? We, too, may ditch the solo captain life and hang out with the other obnoxiously happy couples, as part of a couple this time.
But no matter how it all shakes out, Jesus will be the answer. Every time.
Let’s both of us step out of the boat when He calls us and walk with Him faithfully.
With much love,
Em
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