Five Things I Like About Being Single/Divorced (Alone)
I think some people will be able to relate to this post and others will be happily hiding behind their partner/spouse/significant other, thankful that they don’t live the single life or simply like shaving and waxing their legs! Either way, I do hope you enjoy this, more or less light-hearted, blog post on this, the eve of 2019. This is not a real list of what I like about being single; it’s my tongue-in-cheek list of things that contribute to the little things that make me happy. Of course, things like me time, not having to undertake in idle chit-chat and cooking big dinners every night are also contributing factors of my happiness, but I just couldn’t pass up the thought of a list based on nonsensical personal hygiene things I no longer worry about. Enjoy.
I’ve been divorced for eight years and one month; technically I still have one month to officially divorced, but we can use the date of the Decree Nisi and not the Decree Absolute as our benchmark date of freedom. This was not a choice of mine, to be clear, my husband walked out on us for someone else; I was, then, sort of a happily married woman; difficult to be happy when you find out your husband had some pretty dark secrets. But this is not why you’re here. What are the reasons behind my happiness of today in my life of singledom (I do tend to make up random words, it does go against my disdain for poor grammar, but my blog posts usually do that anyway as these are usually written in 30 minutes or less, having been conjured up in my head over a period of a few days or weeks).
1. The Big Bed
This may seem like a small price to pay for freedom, but my former husband was a very, very tall man, and with height, comes some weight, not a lot of weight. To be honest, he was skinny and, before I met him, he was no fatter than a lamp-post – I have the photo to prove that, so I’m not kidding. But, being a tall man meant he took up most of the bed; length-wise for sure, but he also preferred the middle of the bed, so I was stuck on the side of the bed, with one leg hanging off all night and had the occasional fall out of bed if he rolled too quickly and I was in a deep sleep. Yeah, that’s fun! Especially on those hardwood floors. Now, I have my super king sized bed all to myself. I admit that I still squish myself onto the side of the bed, probably out of habit, and the rest of the bed is filled with soft cuddly toys and the kitties – at least one sleeps between my legs every night. Who cares? I don’t have to share the bed with anyone so it bothers no one that my kitties and soft cuddly toys still sleep with me! A small piece of joy in the night that isn’t negotiable should ever the occasion arise that someone else slept in my bed…I’m still waiting for that.
I don’t have to listen to anyone snoring. There’s nobody there but me. I admit, the cat sometimes does give a snort and my other kitty – the one that usually sleeps with my son – does snore, so if she’s in there, too, then I have snoring but it’s not very loud, she is only a cat, after all.
I could actually sleep in the bed sideways, length ways, or upside down and nobody would be there to roll their eyes or tell me I’m hogging the bed or stealing the covers. So, chalk up one for me and my big bed.
No More Dutch Oven! (See 2 below). The biggest plus of having my bed to myself has to be the sheets aren’t untucked, dishevelled and the duvet seems to stay in its place no matter what. Since I can remember, I have had a thing about the sheets and my bed covers; my father started referring to me as the Princess and the Pea Princess because I complained of ‘crinkly sheets’ one night at the ripe old age of four and I think that’s when I was on my way to tucked in sheets and sliding in and out of bed like a snake slithering gingerly around the rain forest. It didn’t take much in my younger days to ‘make the bed,’ slide out from the top and fluff the pillows and bob’s your uncle. Done. It’s back to that, more or less, although the slithering is more like a roll out the side these days, but one quick tuck and it’s back to perfection once again. Ahh…crinkle free, high thread count sheets every night. Heavenly.
2. Farting
Right, this could be a paragraph of number one above, but since it is not simply confined to the bed, it’s got its own number. Not that this is a habit of mine whatsoever, but if there’s nobody there to hear it, smell it or complain about being subjected to it then I can do it to my heart’s content in the night, in the morning or in the afternoon during my afternoon nap, should I so choose to have one. So, it’s another small victory for the singletons. Farting is completely acceptable in bed.
It’s also acceptable in other parts of the house and in the car when you’re alone. Admittedly, I do fart in the car on occasion, but I try to limit it because, you know, closed in spaces, especially when it’s cold outside, can be a noxious situation. But, I have some problems with my digestive tract, so definitely this occurs in the house and I don’t care…well, I do care, because I still do it in the loo, but I could, if I wanted to, rip one wherever and whenever I’m home alone! The beauty of bodily functions and having nobody there to say how bad it smells. Of course I know how bad they smell. I’m not nose-blind!
My ex was a master farter! He used to do that thing with the duvet and the farting and pulling the duvet over my head so I couldn’t escape his stinky ass smelly farts, the Dutch Oven! When we were married, I remember him remarking on the fact that even after eight or nine years, or thereabouts, he had never once known that I could fart, let alone did because a lady dare not do that in the company of others, least of all the man she was in love with. For shame! I think towards the end, that changed and the number of Dutch Oven treatments I endured I finally fought back with one of my own. Maybe that was the game changer. Now, it’s just another basic right of passage for me. Farting at will.
3. Shaving/Waxing
Maybe this should have been at the top of the list, but nonetheless it’s most definitely in the top five of my happy reasons to being single.
Let’s face it, some women don’t really like to shave and or wax their legs, armpits, hoo ha or their bottoms. It is just what we do so we don’t gross out the person we are with, with our stubbly hairy legs or our hairy armpits and heaven forbid, a hairy hoo ha or bum.
I not that I do not have very hairy armpits, but maybe that’s because I’m creeping up on that age where your hair stops growing in some places, but to be honest, I don’t think they ever were ‘that’ hairy. However, when you’re in the relationship, usually you spend copious amounts of time shaving, waxing or both depending upon how much you want to impress your significant other.
I remember getting waxed regularly every time I was going to visit my former ex, when we were doing the long distance thing. The Russian woman who used to wax me would always say, ‘I’ll make you as smooth as baby’s bottom, turn over!’ It used to make me cringe when she said it; the thought of making myself feel like a baby was not really the desired look I was after – the word paedophile used to pop into my head whenever she used that phrase. I got her point, but maybe a different analogy would have been more appropriate. Even now, thinking back to that and then the ‘P’ word even coming to mind makes me cringe. But, I wanted to be sexy and hot for him, not for me, for him. Now, if I shave it’s usually because I’m playing tennis and wearing shorts, if I play and wear long athletic wear, no way I’m shaving. I am happily wearing my ape-like legs with pride most of the time and nobody, but nobody would ever know it. I definitely do not wax anymore; so no painful trips to the nice Russian lady for a long time. A smile comes to my face even thinking of my hairy, unshaven legs and my other bits that are safe from hot wax, painful rips and inappropriate connotations of a smooth bottom. It also saves a ton of money on razor blades, they’re expensive, at over £15.00 for refills which is entirely extortionate. I think the last time I bought refills was in 2014! Hoorah for saving money! Every little bit helps!
4. Falling Asleep on the Sofa or in the Comfy Chair
This one is a joy! There’s nobody standing there with arm out saying, ‘Come on, it’s bedtime, lets’ go’ every night and dragging me upstairs to the bed where sleep was never the first thing on the agenda. Bedtime in my house meant a little nookie before falling asleep either on top of me or, at a minimum, leg over me – guess get your leg over is appropriate here – whilst I’d try to wiggle out from under to clean up and get into my pyjamas. Let’s not forget turning all the lights off downstairs as well. Why can’t men turn the bloody lights off when they leave a room? Even my son does that. So irritating. Or maybe because when I was growing up, my mum would have my hide if I left the lights on after leaving a room and it’s become her legacy to me to be the same about them. I’m pretty confident though, that it is just a man thing and that their brains turn off the lights but their hands do not.
Now, if I’m watching something on the television or doing some mindless game on my tablet, reading a book in my comfy chair and cuddling with the one kitty that cuddles with me in my chair, who cares? Sometimes I wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning, still fully clothed and drag myself upstairs, get my jammies on and crawl into bed for another hour or two. Sometimes I just stay there! Shock! Horror! Sleeping in my clothes all night in the chair or on the sofa! Okay, admittedly, on the nights where this does happen, I do end up with a crick in my neck or my back aches just a little, but I still think it’s worth the price when I crack open an eye, and there’s nobody there with a hand out, telling me to go upstairs and get into bed. Of course, when I was married, I wanted to go upstairs and make mad, passionate love to my husband, but the freedom of sleeping on the sofa in my clothes, maybe now, at my age, has a certain blissfulness about it. The chair won on many a nights, but only because the kitty preferred the chair and I loved a cuddle with him but the sofa, my big, squishy, soft sofa wins if he’s not around.
5. Makeup and Skin Care Products and Regimes
How much money and time did I spend on makeup?! I think I have every colour of Chanel™ lipstick that has ever been made, along with every kind of skin care products known to man and that’s no exaggeration! After the nightly love-making and turning the lights off in the house, the next stage was facial preparation. I think it consisted mainly of washing with a lovely facial cleanser, followed up by an expensive toner, then eye cream, facelift cream, filler cream, then facial cream and once or twice a week, a nightly sleep in mask, with another mask thrown in during the week in the morning for good measure. Keeping those wrinkles and age lines at bay was hard work. Now, my regime consists of, well, falling asleep in the chair/sofa and then dragging myself into bed, foregoing any kind of skin washing whatsoever unless I have insomnia, in which case, I go back to the pampering routine to kill time in the middle of the night when hoovering is unacceptable as may wake the neighbours.
Makeup now equals a little foundation once or twice a month when I have to go somewhere and look like I haven’t been sleeping on the sofa or said comfy chair, some eyebrow pencil because I’m blonde and you can’t see the tiny hairs above my eyes unless I pencil them on and maybe the odd eyeliner again to hide the fact that I’ve slept on the sofa in my clothes the night before.
No more facials at the spa. Admittedly, I do like a good facial for relaxation purposes and the way the skin feels so soft, sometimes it’s sticky but it has that shine to it so I can put up with sticky to get the shine. But, again, money-saving practices. If I’m not going to the spa, using tons of products and not putting on gobs of make up, then I’m saving money. My horses don’t mind that they can’t see my eyebrows and the foundation would just run down my face when I’m sweating either on the tennis court or in the arena riding so another win for me.
To be honest, I’ve never been a huge make up wearer, just a buyer and one guy I happened to date said to me one night, ‘Why don’t you just go put a bit of lippy on and doll yourself up a bit more?’ Guess how many more dates I had with that bloke? A total of none. He also suggested I wear skirts more often in the same evening, so that was never going to be a long-lasting relationship. If he knew about my sofa/chair sleeping nights and lack of personal hygiene he would have probably ended it before I did, but we didn’t get that far after the lippy comment.
To Wrap It Up
I do realise that there are way more than five reasons for me to enjoy the single life as noted in my opening paragraph and these listed are a mere tip of the proverbial iceberg, but to the untrained eye, these small, seemingly petty things actually do give me a scintilla of joy I so need after my bitter divorce, so holding onto these small things is really okay and are not really insignificant to me. Afterall, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so if these things do, in fact make it easier to cope with not having a significant other in my life, then please don’t judge me and instead laugh with me about the few things that I can embrace in being single, albeit most of them have to do with personal hygiene and bodily functions.
Of course, I could go into the deeper, meaningful reasons why being single is better than being with someone just for the sake of being with someone or all of the other reasons I have to be grateful, but this was just an end of the year, light-hearted post that I hope at least made you smile, laugh or want to come back and read the next post of the five top reasons why I Don’t Like the Single Life, because there are definitely a lot and actually some of these cross over to that because being single when you didn’t want to be isn’t that easy to swallow, so let’s just be grateful that the things I’ve listed here aren’t difficult to attain but make me smile because smiling sometimes isn’t easy.
Thanks for stopping by, hopefully you’re reading some of my other posts and enjoying my blog thus far.
I hope 2019 will bring you, me, my children, family and friends more to laugh about than cry , no Brexit and the end of the Trump presidency in the mighty US of A. Until next year, I bid you adieu.
Cheers
x
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