Alone

Date: 25 July 2010 12:57:22

Sundays are the day that I most struggle with being alone. I mean alone not single. Let me explain, I grew up in a fairly old fashioned evangelical Christian family. Although things did relax a little but not a lot during my teenage years. I grew up in a family where Sunday was different from the rest of the week. No T.V or radio on a Sunday, we wore our Sunday best, we even used different crockery and cutlery on a Sunday. Sunday was a family day, we usually did things as a family, either games or a walk, and of course there was always church in the morning (and the evening as we got older.) When I first left home I really struggled with not having that automatically filled Sunday, and have continued to struggle periodically on and off since. I know that I wouldn’t choose to live near my family, but that doesn’t stop me missing them. Sundays are often just a day that underlines to me that I don’t really fit anywhere. The Christian world is not good at dealing with people who aren’t attached somewhere. They like it best when people come as part of a couple and later with children too, but they can deal with when you are there as a parent, daughter, son, aunt, uncle etc or even if you are still where you grew up school friend. But what about when you don’t fit any of these boxes. When you don’t fit, Sunday can turn into a day that just emphasis that you are alone.
This feeling of being alone is also emphasised to me when I church hunt, the majority of times I have church hunted, have happened due to a major life event, so in my brain church hunting, already has an association with struggle and change, outside of the church event. I also struggle walking into a church by myself, especially for the first few times. All these things work together to make me feel alone.
Over the last 6 weeks or so, despite not being at church, I have managed to have things happening so I have spent time with people who make me feel less alone in my world. When I have a few weeks like this, it underlines the alone feeling when it doesn’t happen. All in all then not a good day as all the things that make me feel most alone have happened in one day! (I did try a new church this morning, which considering how I’m feeling was good for me.)
Before certain people start to panic, sometimes it helps to have a moan. I guess the way to sum it up, is in a perfect world I wouldn’t have to deal with this, but life isn’t perfect, and in order for me not to feel like this now, I would have had to have made different choices which would cause me other problems and frustrations at other times.