Being Alone

I’m not very good at being alone. I mean, I do it all the time, but I’m not great at it.

At work, I usually have clients to talk to or I am involved in some kind of organizing project that takes up all my brain power and leaves me no time to be lonely. At home I fall into the deep arms of the internet. I can go out with friends when we are all available (IE never) and I can also hang out with my awesome family with whom my house is attached to (Guesthouse FTW!).

But in the car? I’m alone. I can listen to the radio. I can turn on a podcast. But there isn’t any human interaction. This used to be when I called and talked to my husband. You see, the last 6 months of our marriage, we lived in separate states (which did not lead to the divorce, but did make it logistically a lot easier) and so we would talk on the phone a lot. But, seeing as we were both busy people with a lot to do, the best time for us to do this was usually when we were driving. I would call him in the morning and usually we would both be on our way to our days (work for me, school for him) and then we also would sometimes get off around the same time. We would talk every Friday just as I was getting to the restaurant I worked at. We would talk when I was getting off work and he was going to bed. Anytime we ran errands on the weekend, we called when we were in the car to say hi and chat. Now, every time that I get in the car, I get an overwhelming urge to call him. Walking the dogs is also hard now – he was usually getting ready for bed when I took them out, so we would have a nice half hour chat.

This divorce has been hard for a plethora of reasons, but mostly because I miss having someone to talk to who completely understood what I was trying to say because they knew everything about my life. I didn’t have to spend time prefacing stories with an explanation of a personality of a client or a friend. I didn’t have to explain why things were funny or maddening. I just had someone who listened and was interested and liked hearing what I had to say on the other end of the phone. I miss that. A lot.

I am finding outlets. This blog. Calling friends. Having a really good inner monologue. But I don’t think I will ever take for granted the fact that having someone to listen to you about stupid things about your day and be able to understand and care is amazing. I hope to someday have that again, although I know I need to learn how to be alone first.

Which brings us back to the topic at hand – being alone.

I am hiking the Colorado Trail. It is 486 miles. My dad is hiking the first 104 with me. This means I have 382 miles to be alone. I’m taking my phone full of podcasts and books on tape and music. I’ll have my kindle full of books. There will be loads of other hikers on the trail and people find trail families and friends all the time. None of that is why I am going.

I have never be alone as an adult. I have been married since before I could legally drink! I feel like I need to learn how to sit better with myself, and only myself. I am hoping this hike will help me achieve that, at least to some degree. I want to listen to my inner voice and figure out what I need and what I want – just me, without taking anyone else into consideration! I want to learn how to be alone and make alone a positive instead of a negative word in my mind. I want to reconnect with my body. I want to reconnect with the old me, the new me, the real me. I know being alone is the best way to do that!

Solo-Hiking: the oldest new way to figure your shit out.

What’s in a Name?

When I got married, I didn’t change my name for a year.

I liked my name. Sabrina Blackner. It just sounded right. I didn’t want to change it. I didn’t like the idea that getting married changed my identity – the person I had been my whole life. Sure, I could still be the same person (with a different name) but something about changing my name seemed like I was changing who I was.

But, I lived in a conservative college town and was married to a conservative guy and my feminist killjoy was still off in the back of my mind and hadn’t yet overtaken my being so eventually I let him drag me to the social security office a whopping block from our house to get it done.

I regretted it as soon as I signed.

My ex-husband has an insanely common last name. He also has an insanely common first name, but that isn’t the point. His last name became mine and all of a sudden I felt more common. Less like me. You could no longer google my name and only stuff about me pop up. In fact, when you googled my married name some kidnapped girl was number one! What the heck?! I was getting overshadowed by a kidnapped girl? But overshadowed I became, not just on search engines.

I became a more common person, at least societally for where I was religiously at the time. I put my all into making sure my husband would be a good breadwinner and would have a good career. I worked jobs I hated but were extremely stereotypical (Nanny! Babysitter! Dumb office job! Server!) of someone who quit their education in order to put their spouses first. And by spouse I mean husband because I don’t know anyone other than women who do something like that. This went on for 8 years. I did it happily. I was glad that my husband was going to be able to give us the lifestyle we talked about for so long once he graduated. I was ecstatic that we were able to travel and my jobs contributed to us becoming debt free and being able to buy a house. I loved our life. I really did. I could have been happy there for a long time – maybe forever. We were planning on having kids next year. We had an entire life mapped out and it would have been great. But then my husband figured out he was gay and decided we shouldn’t be married anymore. And poof, all that was gone.

So here I am, about a month away from having my name back. Is it odd that it makes me feel less ordinary just thinking about being Sabrina Blackner again? Being a Blackner is the reason I feel like I can hike the Colorado Trail. It is the reason I know I’ll be able to make a really good career out of redoing houses with my dad and brother. Now that I am going to have my name back, I have to live up to it. I was never committed to my married last name. It was common, it was ordinary, and it wasn’t mine.

I’m back to Blackner and ready to kick some ass.