Marrying Joy: You’re the One You’ve Been Waiting For

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.” ~Alan Watts

There had been other voices asking such questions as “How can this be happening?” and “When will this end?” that I understood: My partner was planning his honeymoon before our divorce was final.

After the divorce, a voice asked a question I didn’t understand, “Will you marry me?”

“Marry me” popped into my head at what seemed to me the least likely times: talking zip codes with my new mailman at my new home, passing strangers on the street, visiting old friends, playing with my toddler granddaughter, making new friends at parties, and seeing myself in the mirror.

“Will you marry me?” would flash through my head and make me feel needy, as if I had been walking on a bridge that suddenly turned to sawdust. I forgot what I was thinking, what anyone was saying. I felt unloved and unworthy, and I was falling.

If the person I had thought was my best friend for twenty-seven years could dump me, why would anyone want to be my friend, much less marry me? Why would anyone want to hire me? Then “Will you marry me?” led to me being fired for the first time in my life from the best paying job of my career.

Being hired at that salary surely proved I was relevant and moving forward with my life. But I froze when “Will you marry me?” yelled in my head as my supervisor, who was the same age as my children, gave me the simplest instructions.

I forgot how to edit, research, write, and even type. I stared blankly at him as I listened to “Will you marry me?” Of course I didn’t want to marry this kid or anyone else.

The question began roosting on my headboard when I fell asleep and pecking at my eyelids when I woke. It tagged along, ambushing me all day until it was in the driver’s seat and driving me to the brink.

Dumped, jobless, and joyless, I sat by a pond—that would have been the perfect place to jump in had it been full of piranha—and pondered the hounding “Marry me.”

At first I dismissed it as my subconscious being desperate for stability and companionship, my longing to once again have the family circle that I thought we had created for a lifetime. Then I dismissed it as if the question were a bully taunting that no one wanted me.

I told myself to stop it, just stop. Please. I gathered what few spiritual and gestalt resources I could and used the one that never failed to ground me. I breathed. In and out. In and out.

I felt relief until a voice chastised me for not doing this sooner. I smiled at the thought and myself. The thought dissolved and I breathed, in and out. In and out. Sweet peace warmed me when that voice demanded, “Will you marry me?”

I asked myself why I was hearing this question. Is this what I wanted someone to ask me? Or was I doing the asking?

I breathed and waited. In and out. In and out. The answer came back that I was doing the asking. Okay, I was asking. I could accept that. But who was I asking? I hadn’t thought of anyone besides my partner in those terms for decades.

I waited and breathed. In and out. In and out. In and out. A breeze rippled the deep-blue pond, wild jasmine perfumed the air, the light shifted, birds sang, and the hard ground I was sitting on grew harder before the answer came: “Myself.”

Myself? I was asking myself to marry me? Really? That’s what this was about? My burst of laughter flung me back on the ground, which made the couple snuggling nearby look to see if I was losing it.

I felt ridiculous and pathetic until it dawned on me what “Marry me” meant: I was begging myself to love me, to be my best companion, my worthiest friend, my most trusted love. When I hadn’t understood the question, the voice had asked more often and louder until I could hear nothing else.

In that moment I wanted nothing but to be gentle with myself, to support myself, to compliment myself, to explore my interests, to travel wherever I most wanted to go, and to share my joy, charm, and grace with everyone.

I felt pride for having tried to build a happy family and for having the courage to accept that chapter of my life was over, for better and for worse, and the strength to rediscover myself, for better or for worse.

All the hurts, jabs, and bitterness fell away. I wanted to silence anyone—especially myself—who thought I was awkward and undeserving. I wanted to celebrate magnificent me.

When I stood, I felt taller, straighter, as if my spine had grown by inches. I felt more love and more lovable than I had since I was a child.

I walked around the pond, barely touching the ground as I recognized I was the person I had been waiting for my whole life, the person I could trust to make me happy, the person anyone would be lucky to have for a partner.

Since the pond, I love to go to parties and concerts with friends or alone, to run into people I’d like to know better and join them for tea, to offer and accept invitations to dine, and to ask new and old friends to meet me for a film or berry picking or hiking or kayaking.

And when I occasionally find myself at home alone on a Saturday night, when in the past I’d have been downtown with my partner and our friends, I delight in figuring out what I want to do. And my delight energizes my entire being.

For the first time since I was a child, what I am doing feels right and sure. I have fallen in love with myself again, I delight in the minutes again, I enjoy my friends again, and I am aware of my many blessings again.

Expecting full joy has opened my heart to more than I imagined, and the paths to pursue fullness have opened to me. Before, when I expected unhappiness to continue, it did.

Most revealing about who I was, I realize that I never expected to experience such fullness as a single person. I thought my completeness depended on someone else.

Now I know that what I’ve sought I’ve had all along, whether as a partner or single. I was just waiting for me to notice.

Is being a single person my destination or part of my journey?

Sharing this last chapter of my life with a magnificent someone else would be a beautiful bonus since I have married myself to the joy of simple awareness, of breathing in and out. In and out. Deeply.

Men who are fully alive are beginning to appear in my life. One called last night. I’m breathing in and out.

If you’ve also found yourself newly single, challenge your expectations about what you need to be happy, and then…

Meet yourself.

Fall in love with yourself.

Bedazzle yourself with joy.

Share your joy.

Breathe in and out.

Girl at the ocean image via Shutterstock

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