I don't miss you, I miss SOMEONE.

I'm okay being single. I don't want to be single forever, but for now I do NOT mind it. I've done some soul searching (insert deep philosophical background music). It had been a while since I had been solo and a lot has changed in my life since last time I was looking for love in all the wrong places.

If you take romantic relationships out of the picture, I have gone through five jobs, three apartments and a few friendships in the last year and a half. (That last sentence makes me look like a shit show, and let's be real, I kind of was... in the most controlled way possible.) I think that constitutes a bit of change. Take out relationship drama and you find a wide-eyed girl who moved her country roots to a big city. I've finally landed a job with an incredible company and I have coworkers that have become "killer friends"... you see what I did there?! That's a LOT of change. Awesome change.

Despite the change in the form of a promotion, an awesome apartment with a great roommate, and the best friends a girl could ask for, I find myself missing my "girlfriend mode." What do I mean? Well, it's pretty simple. I miss being a girlfriend, and that means I miss having a boyfriend. Do I miss the tool I dated? Nope. Not in the slightest. I have learned the hard way that I am so much better off, but it doesn't mean that I LOVE being by myself. Sometimes, I do. A lot of times, I don't.


But here's what I miss.


I miss thinking of fun ways to surprise someone. I miss thinking about how to make their day or cheer them up. I miss thinking about what kind of gifts would make them smile the biggest.

I miss having the best friend who listens and let's you be excited/mad/confused/scared/dorky. Yes, your friends can do this, but there's something comforting about knowing that your significant other will snuggle with you when you're done being a basket case.

I miss date nights. I'm not talking about the "Put your heels on and spend a lot of money on dinner" type of date nights. I'm talking about the "PJ's and takeout with Netflix" date nights. (This one can be altered into a girls night, but usually it involves celebrity gossip, fingernail polish and lots of wine... LOTS of wine). Don't get me wrong, the fancy date nights are very important too. There's something to be said about showing off your arm candy.

I miss the S.... nuggling.

I miss holding hands. When I miss holding hands a lot, I clasp my own hands and pretend to hold my own hand. Just kidding. (You'll never know if I'm actually kidding...)



So yeah... I miss being a girlfriend and I miss the placeholder of a person who is my go-to confidant. But here's the thing: Just because I miss having a person to do all of those things with, it doesn't mean that I'll just start sticking people into the empty space and seeing which random person fits!

I had a friend tell me recently that I shouldn't be looking to date right now, but just look around to have fun. Well, sorry hunny, this isn't college anymore and I am not the type to just fill the blank with some Tom, Dick or Harry. Sure, dating is great. It's fun. It gives you butterflies. But it also takes a LOT of work. It takes emotional investment when done for the right reasons, and let me assure you, I am doing this dating thing for the right reasons. When you invest your heart, you invest a little piece of yourself that is permanently changed. When you start giving all of those parts away to a bunch of different people, you start to lose your identity. You're altering so many of those little pieces, to the point where you are left with random puzzle cutouts that don't fit together. Before you know it, you're too afraid to give those pieces away in fear of an even more mismatched final product, or even worse, you become a person who ALWAYS has to have someone around to make sense of those pieces.

When it comes down to it, I have realized that it's too early for me to give more pieces away to be altered. Again, I am not saying that I miss my old relationship, specifically. I'm thankful for the opportunities I had to give out each and every piece of me, because like I've said in prior posts, it made me who I am today, but I also know that the ones I have left are special. They're precious and fragile, so it's not fair to me, let alone someone else, to give those pieces away at this time.

So no, I don't want to go on a random date to have "a little fun... but not too much fun." I want to let myself fully make peace with the loss of a dear relationship. I want to let the little chunks of Sarah Soul get stronger in their altered identity, and THEN I want to start dating, because, dang it, I rock and someone will be lucky to date me. I make a great girlfriend. I know because I miss that role. 

But until then, I'm going to love being single and re-learn about what a kick-ass human I am.

When a Heart Breaks.

“A broken heart will turn into a stronger one within hope.”― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

Two weeks is still fresh break up, but let me tell you, I have learned more in the last 2 weeks than I have in a long time. Don't worry. I'm not going to get all sad and mopey on this post. Not intentionally at least.

We all will go through a broken heart at some point and it just plain blows. You realize how many little moments remind you of the person you no longer "get" to think about all day, every day. The radio is an evil torture device. Your clothes are reminders of dates or activities. Restaurants are dangerous memory traps.

Despite the pain that some of these things bring, other things can be brought along with them. Sometimes the hurting brings a sense of release, sometimes the hurting brings a sense of strength, and sometimes the hurting brings a chance to let everything go.

This breakup has sucked so majorly. However crappy it is, though, I have learned these key principles of Broken-Heartedness:


I am allowed to be vulnerable.
I hate being vulnerable. Don't get me wrong, I have always been an emotional person, but being vulnerable is a double edged sword when it comes to being loving. I was recently talking to another friend who is going through a recent and rough breakup, and we talked about how sucky it was to be the one to love so fiercely. Loving hard unfortunately means opening ourselves up for a potentially hard fall. As our conversation went on though, we realized that loving deeply is what makes us who we are, and that we receive so much love from those around us BECAUSE we are able to love hard. That vulnerability is our strength and we can't be afraid to let that love be strong and open.

There is some darn good break-up music out there.
I have two really wonderful women in my life who have made some STRONG break-up mixes. There's just something about belting Beyonce as you fly down the freeway on a sunny morning, thinking to yourself, "Heck ya, Beyonce... What goes around DOES come back around!"

Getting hit on is the most empowering, yet heart-wrenching thing to follow a breakup.

Just days after getting a big fat slice of Dumping Pie, I was somehow convinced to go out to a bar where my ex- and I went whenever we decided to actually get off of Netflix. This could have been a dangerous decision (one that I wouldn't recommend unless you are feeling particularly empowered), but thankfully I had some really wonderful women to encourage me to enjoy myself! At this bar, we quickly found the most Bro-tastic guy I have ever seen, and some how, I caught his eye. I have never been so aggressively hit on in my life, and thankfully my sharp-tongued wit was on point, because I was able to hold my own, in my sassy, classy and smart-assy responses. As I got in my car to leave, alone might I add, I thought to myself, "Oh yeah... I still got it!" It felt wrong and uncomfortable and made me miss the 'absentee' so much, but at the same time, I was able to realize that, eventually, I will be okay with (maybe even look forward to!) someone else flirting with me. It will be okay.

People who you wouldn't expect to be there, are there for you.

I am still amazed at how many people continue to check in on me. Not just to get the drama or the he-said-she-said, but people who genuinely care about my well-being. To those friends who have done so and are reading this, I value you more than you will ever know. Thank you for loving me.

Breakups are crappy for everyone.

I wish I could say that this break-up was a clean one, that when we ended things, all communication stopped. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case. In the grand scheme of things, it has been a good break-up, in the sense that we both love each other so much and truly want the other person to be "okay". No matter what side of the break-up you are on, it's hard. If it's not hard, you didn't/don't truly care for that person, and good thing y'all broke up. 

Little tears are better than big breakdowns.

My mom, God bless her, keeps reminding me that a few little tears here and there are okay. They're normal. They keep you from full blown LOSING IT.

Lastly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, I can be stronger than I realize.
When everyone told me I was being so strong, and that I was handling it so well, I wanted to punch them all in the faces, not because of what they said, but because I didn't feel good. I felt like I was going to throw up every fifteen minutes, and I cried more frequently than that. I felt as weak as a blade of grass. But I realized that they were right. I was being strong. I got out of bed every morning. I slapped a smile on my face... sometimes real, and sometimes about as real as Heidi Montag's third set of boobs. I made sure to eat (most of the time), and I took care of myself. That is how I realized that I was being strong. I wasn't doing it for a show, or to get more people to say that I was "doing so well," but I was doing it to make myself well, to make myself strong. Becoming strong is not revenge, it's resilience.

I'm still learning about this breakup. I'm learning that my perspective changes more than I blink and that I am capable of a LARGE range of emotions. But I'm learning. That's what breakups are for in my opinion, to learn about how you handle crap. To have a broken heart is to work on a gigantic puzzle without all of the pieces. Eventually though, you realize your puzzle is just part of the bigger puzzle, and with even more inspiration and determination, and help from another puzzle master, you make a seriously epic piece of work.

I started with a quote, so I will leave you with one that resonates within me as I write. 2014 is the year of positive thoughts, my dears.

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.” -- (Unknown)

XoXo.