I recently attended my 30 year high school reunion.  I know!   Actually, I didn’t like high school.  To me, it was a weigh station on my way to college.   Something you had to go through, get through.   During a conversation with a classmate, he said he had been so sure I would have married my senior year boyfriend, have kids, etc., etc – he wanted to know what happened, why the future he had dreamed for me hadn’t occurred.  I looked out the window as I told him that boyfriend and I were more best friends than anything else, passion never became a part of our relationship.  From the corner of my eye, I saw his head snap up and he stared at me.

I was a late bloomer, in most things.  What others could do well naturally, I struggled to command.  Spanish, tennis, calculus, sex.  Okay, so I never mastered most of them.  Drawing and dancing were my natural abilities.  Both are the same, really.  You move over and let them flow through you.  I can’t think of any other activity or talent that I was able to bring that selfishness or selflessness to.  I’ve never known how to distinguish the two.  If I’m selfish about drawing, I can show you something you didn’t see.  If I’m selfish about reading, I can share knowledge you wouldn’t otherwise have.  Acts of selfish selflessness – see what I mean?

I even married late – I was 36 years old.  Although I struggled hard at that, I didn’t master it either.  Children – well, you already know that tale.  What I did master both before and after my marriage was successful dating.  Certainly not an easy task but after a few decades, I learned enough.  If not to be an expert, then at least to have acquired a little knowledge I can share.   In my twenties, a older female friend once asked me why I didn’t have any close female friends.  She was right, I didn’t.  All my closest friends were males.  I was stumped by the question and worried about it for several years.  I’ve only recently been able to answer it.

While all the other 20 & 30 something women around me were searching for husbands, or if they had husbands working towards children, I wasn’t thinking about either.  I was trying to figure out James Joyce, trying to find the next model for the piece I had in my head, trying to dance to jazz.  Talking about men, children, and curtain colors didn’t interest me.  Most men talked about anything but those things.  Around me they discussed current topics, modern art, books, history.  Hence, my friends were men.    I had nothing to add to women’s conversations and they knew it, too.

But now, everything’s different.  The women who married young have raised their children, in many cases have left or been left by husbands and are heading out into my former world.  Some in the misguided idea that the dating world is fun.  Some with the fears and trepidations they are right to have.  What knowledge can I share with them?

While I was in the dating world, I learned how to tell if a man is married or not regardless of what he says, that most of what you see is not what you get and that usually there’s some vital piece of information that if you knew what it was in the beginning, you would have hauled ass at the first opportunity.   Dating teaches you to listen to the silence, hear what isn’t being said.  Just like dancing and drawing, the most important parts exist in the empty spaces.  The spaces between words and movement, between line and color.  Look for what isn’t there and you’ll find the truth.

Being alone and being lonely are two different things.  After divorce, you’re lonely.  If you work at it, you learn to be alone.  That’s when you stop searching for “him” and start finding “you”.

First things first.  Learning to be alone.  Step #1 – drive in silence.  Step #2 – go to sleep in silence or with white noise.  Step #3 – resist calling someone on your cell phone when you are by yourself.   Truth exists in the empty spaces between things.   You can hear yourself through the silence, dreams project clearly onto empty screens.    Souls don’t need music to dance.