I almost feel like I should apologize. When my married friends couldn’t relate to my stories about dating, I was always somewhat taken aback. Seriously, how could they forget?

But honestly, those feelings and memories have faded so significantly, it takes lots of deep thinking to bring them to the surface. (Which is so strange, considering that this all used to be a constant, everyday sort of thing.)

So the following is more for me, an attempt to remember the highs and lows so that I don’t lose my ability to relate entirely.

Five Downsides a.k.a Things I do not miss not even one little bit

1. Loneliness. For me, the #1 worst part of being single was the urgent loneliness. I spent a good chunk of time aching for outside communication. I’ll admit, I was usually pretty passive in creating social get-togethers. I could do it, but when I did, often spent the entire time not having fun because I was stressing about whether or not everyone was having fun. So oftentimes I’d wait. And wait. And wait for something to happen. This kind of waiting drove me to carry my cell phone around everywhere—even setting it just outside the shower—so I could be aware the moment communication was received. I’d find myself staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning checking Facebook or Gmail to see if maybe someone wrote. And then feeling more and more lonely with each unfulfilled refresh.

I think it’s because of these feelings that I still hate coming home to an empty house.

(Note: This trait didn’t manifest itself when I was living with good friends—those girls could always counteract the lonely.)

2. Being busy for busy’s sake. When I entered an event into my cell phone calendar, the day would light up purple. I lived for purple days. What? The Relief Society is hosting a get-together for people who once listened to the Spice Girls? Sounds great to me! Service activities? Perfect. I even scheduled in TV shows like the Office. Anything to get away from the lonely, empty, non-purple days.

3. Cooking for one. Option A: Spend time alone cooking a healthy meal so I could eat it alone at the table and then have some nice alone time to clean up the mess. Option B. Unwrap a granola bar and enjoy a dozen chocolate mini-eggs. Be done in 5 minutes. Repeat as needed throughout the evening.

I nearly always took Option B. (I’m surprised I didn’t get scurvy.)

4. Dating. The boy whose life goal was to work in a coal mine. The guy who chronicled his adolescent, illegal misdeeds for the entire evening. Boys who expected kisses on the first dates. (They really should have known better.) The guy who insisted he was in love with me even though we’d only been on a single date. The guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer—even though I’d given it to him 29 times.

Worse: Feeling so guilty because I didn’t reciprocate affectionate feelings for a wonderfully nice guy. Awkward first dates. Awkward any dates. Awkward break-ups.

The Worst: Not being able to stop obsessing over why a boy wasn’t interested anymore. Not being able to quiet the voices in my head telling me everything that was wrong with me. Then, after a few days where I was finally starting to be okay with myself—having that boy call up to “chat” and starting the cycle all over again.

5. Coping with the holding pattern. Let’s be honest. I spent way too much time stressing over important, but not life-changing, decisions. I was never one of those girls to really worry about whether or not I would get married. But I had a really hard time making decisions about what to do with my life in between.

The hardest part about having no restraints is that you don’t really have any guidance on where to go. I wasn’t attached to my job or my roommates, I didn’t have any big responsibilities, and I wasn’t in debt. I didn’t have anything keeping me around—except for the tiny fact that I didn’t know what else I wanted to do.

It wasn’t that I didn’t try things. I did. But I just didn’t need to do any of it. I never found anything that just picked me up and spoke to me, giving me purpose and direction.

It was paralyzing. And demoralizing.

Five Upsides a.k.a. Things I wish I’d appreciated more when I was single

1. Cheapness of the single life. When I’d go on vacations with the girls, I could count on paying  for airfare for one, food for one (and I’m a cheap eater), one-third of our hotel costs, one-third of our rental costs, etc. Now everything seems more than twice as expensive. Twice the airfare, twice (or three-times) the meals, full hotel costs, full rental costs.

No splitting. None.

So now, when I see a really great deal on travel, I have to mentally multiply it by two. And that takes all the fun out of it.

2. Dating. As awful as dating could be, there were always the few that held a sense of promise. The promise of fresh personalities, new perspectives, and undiscovered hobbies and passions. The thrill of staying up until dawn talking about anything. The butterflies of the first kiss.

That fresh newness would only stay for a little while. And it was wonderful.

3. Time management. Even though I didn’t always know what to do with my time, it was all mine.  If I didn’t want to eat my “dinner” until 12am, fine. No one cared. If I wanted to turn off my alarm and not shower in the morning, that’s fine too. Do nothing other than read for three days straight? Perfect!

Not so much anymore. There’s always someone else to think about and another person’s schedule, preferences, and feelings to consider.

4. Traditions. Holidays, birthdays, Super Bowls, whatever. I did it the way I’d always done it and never had to miss favorite events. Now holidays are either a rush—trying to hit both houses and do everything—or half-holidays—missing out on the holiday with one family in order to enjoy it with the other. I love my Ryan’s family, and I enjoy their traditions, but it’s just not the same.

5. My way. My favorite way to sleep is on my tummy with my left hand tucked under my pillow and my left knee bent. This position is amazingly comfortable and only takes up half the bed; regardless, every time I try it, I end up bumping elbows with Ryan. All night long. So no sleeping my way.

This trend continues through the day. Many of the things I’ve always done—getting up and ready, cooking, cleaning, spending time with friends, relaxing—I now have to do differently. With another person in the mix, my old way of doing things may no longer be the best way of doing things.

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(For the record, I could write much longer list of things I like about being married. I love being married. But that’s another post altogether. It just didn’t feel right to include a list of the downsides of being single without balancing it with the upsides of being single.)

I guess it’s kind of like being a detective. You take your clues (in my case, a 102° fever, tonsils slightly smaller than golf balls, throat gunk and soreness, dehydration, nausea and vomiting, and an aching everything), apply what you know (which, in some cases, wasn’t much), and pronounce a treatment.

And it was so much fun that I decided to take some PTO days from my honeymoon so that I could do it all again. And boy, what a good decision that was. Because who doesn’t love spending entire days prostrate before the toilet, watching the Olympics on the TV that your gracious fiance moved to the bathroom doorway to keep you company?

By the end of everything, I’ve had at least six nurses, five ask-a-nurse phone calls, four prescriptions, three physicians, three big-ass insurance bills, two urgent care visits, two blood tests, one hospital visit, one catheter, one IV, and zero diagnosis. But hey, if you’re cured, it doesn’t really matter what was wrong… Right?

And all of these physical adventures wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t concurrently experiencing a mental health yo-yo. Regardless of the stress that comes from getting engaged, planning a wedding, and buying a house, this is truly among the happiest times of my life. (It’s okay if you want to gag a little. The corner of my mind that’s still “single-Jenn” wants to.) However, from the moment I started my birth control regimen, I started feeling increasingly flat, teary, unhappy, unmotivated, and, above all, unlovable. (I know some of you may be like, “Wait, Jenn! You’ve complained of feeling this way so many times before. What separates this from your normal?” Well let me tell you.) These feelings continued everyday without letting up until I went on the sugar pills. Then it was like everything reverted back to normal. I was happier than I’d been all month. So I tried a different kind of pill. It was even worse. I’d cry for hours about everyday things like, say, getting out of bed or cooking dinner. Needless to say that pill lasted four days. And, again, 24-hours after taking the pill, I felt like I was getting back to normal. I’m now on my third concoction of hormones and the effects are the same, though reduced from what they were before.

This is, from the anecdotes I gather, not an uncommon phenomenon. From what my doctor told me, it has to do with the hormone progesterone and its clever capabilities as a serotonin inhibitor. (Which, since progesterone is produced in higher amounts around the time a girl starts her period, goes a long way in explaining why girls get PMS.)

However, regardless of how common this problem may be, no matter how creatively I googled, all I found were message boards upon message boards of girls sharing the same experiences I’ve had. No useful WebMD information. No studies in scientific journals. Nothing professional or “internet reliable.” This is the most scholarly, well researched article I came up with. Almost 50 years of hormonal birth control and almost nothing has been done to treat this very common side effect.

This floors me. If my airway was blocked, surely that would be considered worthy of medical attention. So why is having my serotonin receptors blocked any different?

Moral of the story: avoid both bacteria and boys, thereby allowing you to sidestep all of the above medical dilemmas. Easy cheesy.

It’s funny how time changes things. Going back and reading everything…it made me smile. Time had mostly erased the self-consciousness I’d had about what I’d written. Then, I went through and read the dozens of half-written blog posts that I didn’t consider quite good enough for publication. In retrospect, they seem kind of sweet.

And there’s a part of me that can’t shake the idea that maybe this is representative of how I handle my entire life…intensely critical of myself in the moment and much more forgiving thereafter.

I’m suppressing the urge to apologize for this. I’m sure in a month I’ll be just fine with that.

It’s true, though. I really am baking cookies for a funeral home! I was being honest! How do you convince someone of this?

So recently, it seems like every time I turn around, another one of my friends is accomplishing some big event like buying a home, returning from a mission, getting married, or having a baby. (Luckily, I haven’t had any friends do all four at once. Awkward….) And at times like these, my thoughts are inevitably drawn to the murky future when, hopefully, it will be my turn to participate in some of the aforementioned activities.

And, honestly, I’m not in a hurry. I mean, sure I’d really like to kiss someone much sooner than later—it’s been a year, after all, since my last kiss—but that doesn’t mean I want the person I kiss sooner to be the one with whom I spend all my laters. I don’t mind being patient if it increases my chances of being happy with the life I end up with.

Of course, this patience is bought with a price. Lately I’ve had a bleak fascination with the sheer physical mechanics of getting older. Sometimes the aging process reminds me not-so-subtly of fairy tales in which a person undergoes a tough and painful transition from someone beautiful to something…less; to me the process of aging is equally dramatic—just on a slower, more gradual scale. (And let’s not start any semantic arguments about what it means to get older or the age at which you become older; those arguments would only be a distraction from my point.) The fact remains that the wrinkles on my forehead and around my mouth are deepening a little at a time. My tummy isn’t as tight as it used to be. I’m not as flexible or athletic as I once was (which is saying a lot as I was never very much of either). The list goes on, but I’m sure you get the picture. The physical self I’ll be spending the rest of my life with—and giving to the one who will eventually share a lifetime with me—is becoming less perfect and less of a gift day after day.

It is, however, my devout hope that as my physical self diminishes, my self contained within my mortal coil will increase. And certainly, being single for longer than I’d consciously planned has generated much personal growth—and has been immensely rewarding. As a result, I’ve been able to cultivate deep friendships, develop new passions, and overcome some old habits. I have tried new activities—things a previous iteration of myself would never have considered—and found them to my liking. Hopefully my sense of passion and compassion, of sympathy and empathy, have deepened as well. Perhaps this is what my parents meant when they encouraged me to “broaden my horizons.”

When the proverbial dust settles, and it is my turn to give myself to someone for a lifetime, I hope that my gift of a greater self will more than make up for my lesser physical gift and that these signs of aging will become endearing proofs of a deeper, longer-lasting beauty.