Playing Hooky :) Part 2

So I have another confession..I played hooky twice this weekend :) I’m guilty..

I enjoy being single. Because let’s face it..you can either be one of those miserable single people..or you can roll with it and do a ton of fun things. I’m fortunate to have best married friends with season tickets to University of South Carolina baseball, basketball and football games. Needless to say, whenever they can’t make a game I get first dibs on their tickets. It works out wonderfully for me :) This weekend I had 2 tickets to Sunday’s baseball game. One of the great things about the church I’m currently attending is the fact that they offer an 8:30am worship service. So I headed to church, enjoyed some great fellowship and an awesome service..then played hooky :) I skipped Sunday school. I know…I know..I’m a total little heathen this week. But eh…you’re only young once right?

I’d asked about 10 of my friends if anyone wanted to tag along and discovered that we have some very diligent students at my Alma Mater. 8 out of 10 had to “study” all day on Sunday for exams on Monday. I surely don’t miss those days :)

My friend Hannah shared a great thing with me a few years ago when we were both in the midst of singleness woes. It’s a poem by Tanya Davis called How to Be Alone. It goes a little something like this:

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in. Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation. Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles. The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by chow-downers, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone. Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and Silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo dessert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back, like a book of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might have never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after a while nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it. You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.

But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from preschool over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.

Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay. It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it. If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it. If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it. There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

I love it! Our society constantly tells us that we have to be connected..to Facebook, to Twitter, to Pinterest, to Google+, to Boys..but why can’t we be connected to our self for a bit?

I took off to Columbia with me, myself and I :) I listened to whatever I wanted to listen too on the radio, I rolled the windows down, I opened my sunroof, I let the sun shine on me and I ate where I wanted to eat. IT WAS AMAZING! No bending to anyone else’s wish, no playing hostess, no worry. I got to Columbia in time to catch warm-ups and batting practice. The sun was shining, it wasn’t freezing and it was GORGEOUS!

I LOVE BASEBALL! I am not to picky when it comes to sports..but there is just something about baseball that warms my heart. I enjoyed a leisurely walk up to the stadium and settled into my seat to people watch. I always enjoy watching crowd dynamics. My seats are just down 3rd base line so I have a great view of the boys.

Two young families were seated behind me and I thoroughly enjoyed the joy that they spread to their little ones. Never were they a bother or annoyance. The grandfather played pretty ponies and race cars not really caring that he wasn’t catching all of the game. Meanwhile, the mom in front of me wiped her children down every 3 seconds with baby wipes, wiped their seats, the rail and anything they touched down. I felt so sorry for her. She completely stressed herself out and didn’t seem to be enjoying the game. They had three little boys and the littlest one wanted to do nothing more than play on the seats instead of watch the game. Every 5 seconds they were trying to redirect his attention to the field instead of letting him enjoy some creative play time. Sometimes..you just need to let your kid..be a kid :)

The game was amazing! Multiple no hit innings! I felt rather bad for the Bucknell Bison : ( But! Carolina beat them out 12-0…it was pretty bad!

But there was one tiny little thing Lemon forgot…that even though it’s cold/windy..the sun still burns! I have a two-tone face at the moment : / Looking like a lobster isn’t really my style..so guess I’ll be buying some sunscreen this week :)

It was amusing to hear the people around me talking :) Sometimes sitting by yourself can be quite hilarious! But you know what? I wasn’t the only pretty single girl alone at the game..for lo and behold…at the end of my row sitting by herself was another girl who knows that it’s okay to be alone :)

To the single lovelies…I salute you! Don’t be afraid to be alone :)

XoXo!

One Hooky Playing Lemon