Content Warning: mentions sexual trauma, alcoholism, suicide, depression, and cancer.

Lately, I have begun to use a small sketchbook as a tool for art journaling my days to have a place to put my feelings. It helps especially on days when it hurts too much to hold a pen for traditionally journaling, or on really high emotion days, I use both word and art journaling.

I have really dived back into the spiritual component of my life in the past 2 months since it really was a lack of a spiritual life that had me diving into a liquor bottle and/or baked goods cabinet. I picked up where I left off with prayers, meditations, and divine reading materials. One of which is The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. It fits considering a year ago, I decided I wanted to begin preparing to go on a pilgrimage to her burial site in France. Only, I completely forgot that when one commits to a deeply spiritual act of faith, there is a lot of inner-house cleaning that commences. Depending on the person and the commitment of faith, (and obviously, ultimately God), it can go smoothly or painfully. In my case, yeah, I ran away like a toddler needing a nap during rush hour in a crowded mall.

Yeah, I was terrified of letting go of what little hope I had, knowing it was human-centered hope (i.e. Pandora’s box) not, God-centered hope. Considering the basis of my false hope was based on a false belief of having been taught I wasn’t ever going to be good enough. (Way too long a story to explain that sentence…wait for the book).

Fast forward a year later to yesterday, on Friday the Thirteenth…and yeah, I saw a black cat running across the road on my drive home. I was in full meltdown having realized mid-recovery meeting that I had a slight attachment to a particular person, in the hope, of gaining their interest. It really disturbed me as I didn’t like how it felt to make a person into something objectified. Fits in with both my core values and spiritual training. Attachment is the sickness of desire; it’s the rejecting of the truth of the subject and making it/them as something to be in possession of. I seriously needed divine help stat!! Hence, the meltdown on the way home.

Best part, I didn’t once think of drinking or binge eating over that. I began pleading, begging my Higher Power to remove this aspect of my lower self (ego) as it was so painful to feel such desperation to have a mate, that I was also feeling disgusted (super nauseous). I recognized that having such a defect of character that I was powerless to remove it and needed His Help. And I got it. The pain left, that agony and disgust left, and I felt serenity return. Sadly, by the time I got home, I began to experience grief.

I turned to self-care for my soul and body. Got a lovely sign from the universe of a ground beetle. My symbology book had it listed as representing a time of resurrection and change. Gotta love that!

Went to bed and woke up exhausted, still grieving and needing to flip the switch before the self-pity bus rolled into town. I felt an urge to look up how people around the world dealt with being single for over a decade by choice and why. I was floored and there are many out there like me who wait until they have met their match instead of settling, like me.

So here I sit, single at 40 with no kids, have one cat still alive, and reflected on this being now going on 12 years single.

It began with a medical diagnosis with no real help as not much was known about fibromyalgia (and still not much). At the end of a relationship in 2009, I decided it was time to do things differently. I sought info, went for mental health support, and was seemingly on the mend with pain when I was in a car accident.

Sooo thankful to this day for that tragic event. It set my life on a trajectory to end up finally being able to be who I always knew I was but had never been truly allowed to be me as God intended. I had hated my life up to that point, was on a career path that made others happy, kept repeating the same kind of relationship (codependent), and felt hopeless in life satisfaction.

I spent several years working on finding modalities to improve my physical health. Read anything  I could get my hands on for mental health improvement and really dove deep into the spiritual life as a practitioner of the Art of True Light. I even published an illustrated book, Seishin. Throughout that timeframe, I also began seeing a trauma specialist for sexual assault, had faced cervical cancer, a lump growing from my liver, got to see Niagara Falls, and walk a 5k in under 3 hours. I tried dating intermittently through the years but as society has gotten to perfect the art of the instant-relationship I pretty much stopped online dating. I did meet a man and we dated for a few months but he turned out to be a dry drunk and I decided to work a recovery program for compulsive eating. This all happened within 9 years.

At this point, I have had it and want to do more with my life than live in my parents’ basement. I want to give back to my region in some capacity. I try to work and get to learn to paint. Decide after much prayer to head to school, while still struggling with intense physical pain, compulsive eating, and facing being an older student compared to the rest of the student population. Trust me, you ain’t fully lived life until you have lived in a dorm room at 40 years old. And, somehow through my short time back in college, I have endured becoming abstinent from compulsive binging, had a sleeve gastrectomy to help with both stomach cancer and morbid obesity-related morbidities; battled suicidal stage of depression, a pandemic, and last but not least, turned alcoholic.

Looking back on all this, I am blown away by the journey God took me on. I gained amazing life skills, was free of the desperate need to gain the approval of others, freed of the need to settle for anyone who came along in a romantic sense, overcame various cancers, resurrected my soul into the Light of Day, am both sober and abstinent, and I fully trust that even more health, happiness, and prosperity is on its way into my life. I’ve amazing friends, healed family relationships, live in a safe environment, and attend a fabulous university. Most importantly, I know who I am and can live life as me with all the qualities and characteristics that make me truly who I was always meant to be.

This is why I have remained single for so long and I know, God-willing the perfect person is on their way to me, and me to them in the Divine Right Order.