I’m in the midst of adjusting to life as a singleton. As a one-top, a wedding RSVP returned with a single regret. The latter is more dramatic than it sounds. This isn’t a regret for me, but a pile of what ifs, a swarm of delicate question marks answered with an undesirable response. I’m alone. And it’s a hefty challenge. Being single again carries the acknowledgement that things aren’t what you thought they would be, that one of you chose something other than your twosome. No matter how much you understand it, the rest of you raises strained fists against the facts. Facts. That’s all they are, I remind myself. An equation of X + Y and how it all adds up on paper, which you never were in the day to day. You prided yourself on that, after all. This matters little, of course.

It’s been quite an adjustment, to say the ridiculous least. I’m completely ready for a relationship, for flights to spots requiring a passport, for debating the merits of acupuncture while two glasses deep, for lunchtimes in the park and traffic updates sent by text. I’m not yet, however, ready for it with anyone else.

And so I tread carefully, and at a wise woman’s suggestion, I feel every pain as it comes. It’s sporadic, the bad, amazing in its momentary power, its ability to surpass professional kudos and the rare triumphant Mother’s Day. I breathe it in, feel, wait, and repeat. Those moments hit hard at times, making me wince and berate myself for not being stronger. Then they leave as the tide does, predictably full and complete. I’m still looking for the shells left on the shoreline. I know they’re there somewhere, shiny and untouched.

It’s difficult to exist online right now. There’s an overwhelming sense among the 140-charactered that life is exquisite, nothing but cotton candy stuck to the lips and effortless recovery from deaths and drama and the otherwise delicate. I’ve been at living long enough to know that isn’t real, that life more often hurls itself at you in the form of boulders rather than snowflakes. But boy, do they make it all seem just that easy.

It’s been quite a week here at the Casa de Kris, amigos. I apologize in advance if I’ve offended any of our Spanish-speaking readers; I know not if that’s correct usage given I took French given the choice. Lot of good it did me. In the fifth grade I was tutored in the language by a woman with the most unique penmanship who would place signs about our house on the most ordinary of things. What is this? She’d ask. I’d respond in what we both deemed to be a most pleasing accent, one that was immediately rejected by the natives when my family moved to Paris six months later. Upon returning to the States I was bussed to the high school to take advanced classes. As you can imagine, there are few things worse for an 8th grader who’s a quart high on anxiety. I knew not the social rules of high school nor the administrative ones, and was stopped in my tracks when entering the 100 Wing before the ever-important bell by a teacher sporting a bow tie. He was shorter than I, even as a 16 year old, and he called me out in front of rows of students at the starting gate of fifth period. I should have known better, but attempted to recapture the joy of the French language last year when I checked out a set of Pimsleur Level II CDs. The Arlington Library refuses to accept the fact that they were returned, despite my rather complex and labored emails to that point, and has put my mother to work directing tourists ’round the Tidal Basin to pay off my debt.

Life has seemed equally frustrating as of late, bad news from all corners of the field. I’m exercising compassion all-around (see the self-indulgent comment I made on my own last post, and feel free to call me out while sporting a bow tie in the color of your choice). I need good news, the promise of a new day, the introduction of a baby (if you must), just something, anything, that lets me know that good is still happening in the world.

I feel strongly that my own good news shall return soon. It’s simply dormant, I suspect, like volcanoes and the souls of Real Housewives.