Dinners Alone

Hello there. Thanks for clicking. Some of you have seen that delicious promo photo for this blog - some classic spaghetti. Or ghett ghett like my mom and I call it. Today, we are going to discuss one of my favorite topics of my life: dinners alone.

Without further ado, here it is, the main entree, ladies and gents.

So, I once had a friend tell me this when I said it was so hard to cook for one:

”Make the portions smaller.” Ignorance.

By the way - cooking for one is as hard as a rock, okay? How about YOU try it? Oh wait… you’ve never had to fend for yourself. 🙄

Here’s another one:

My friend planned on hanging out with me and they knew I really wanted to and needed to, but they cancelled on me because they hadn’t seen their spouse in like a few days. Cringy.

Invest in other relationships other than your marriage. What are you going to do if they die and you’re all alone with no friends? 🤷🏼‍♀️

Listen to me. I am that person whose husband croaked. Okay?

What I’m really thinking is: Wheh, wheh (sound of babying crying that I don’t know how to spell. Grammar people - don’t come after me) your partner has been gone for a few days. My husband has been dead for 2.5 years and I’ve basically been alone ever since. Mmkay? Okay. Let’s steer away from that type of thinking.

Or this one:

A friend complained about eating alone. And I told them that they needed to be thankful that they have someone to come home to at night. To eat with. To worry about their eating habits. 🥬

Y’all really don’t know what you’ve got, do you? Someone to cook dinner with, someone to eat with, a constant human companion. Who cares about what you’ve eaten, if you’ve eaten, what you’re going to eat. I don’t have that. Other than my parents and grandparents and that is completely different.

I could be a selfish friend and implement that someone care about these things. My hardships and my sh*t - no one really cares at the end of the day. Am I being pessimistic? And my friends who really do care - I love you. And appreciate you. I am meaning that people are selfish. When I am feeling alone like nobody cares, odds are, they kinda don’t. Nobody is up at night over my problems. Or yours. But God is.

I used to pray for Matt’s (my husband’s) health and safety as well as mine; I used to pray to grow old with Matt. God answered that prayer, but in a funny way. God doesn’t always give us what we want. Oddly, I have a weird peace about Matt’s death and God has given me that from the beginning. And yes, I’ve been angry at Him, understandably. I remember praying in my journal that I haven’t really touched since I realized this: I prayed for the person I loved and our relationship over 20 times in 6 different entries. Wow. And it continued to not work out. Several scars later, I still miss them. And still love them. But I can’t allow the behavior.

Time does heal, but sometimes, not completely. Some wounds never truly heal. And that’s okay. I have scars from 2017 that still flare up. Took a long time, but with help, I learned to deal with them. Same thing with the current hurt and with the loss of Matthew.

It’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to miss them. It’s not okay to allow bad behavior, disrespect yourself, not show yourself love, you get me. No one deserves emotional abuse. But at the end of the day, I allowed it just because I love that person. Let that sink in. A lot of work to do.

Back to the subject of the blog, sorry I get on tangents, but that’s why y’all are here is to read my heart. Try to be more mindful of others and their hurts. I don’t expect my friends and family to not have a spouse just because mine got taken way. I don’t expect them to just drop everything and take care of me when I need them. But I need them to understand how certain phrases sometimes can feel like a knife scrapping against my heart. I don’t have Matt to worry about anymore and he isn’t here to worry about me. If I could go back and change a lot, I sure as hell would! But I can’t. And now I feel like I have to do things alone. Being single is hard. I’ve never been this single for so long. It’s an accomplishment, really.

Just be mindful, please. We are mindful of you, so be mindful of us.

Xoxo -

A