Made With Raine??

Welcome to my blog everyone! I have an “about” section devoted to why this blog was created however I thought for my first blog post I would take a little time to explain my purpose and intent in a little more detail.  

A little about me- I am in my twenties, a female, and until about a year ago I had been with the same man for four years. We lived together, we went out together, and we were comfortable in the day-to-day life we had created together. I loved him and he loved me. Then, we broke up.

After we broke up, I moved out, and I found myself seeing another man regularly but refused to put any label on things. My ex and I still talked on occasion, keeping my mind constantly cluttered with emotions and letting those “What should I do?” and “What if…” thoughts consume me. I had stumbled from one long relationship into another one, despite my stubbornness to refer to it as a relationship.

In addition, my new roommates and I led completely different lifestyles. Basically, they weren’t in school and I was. They partied constantly and I didn’t. I loved them but I wasn’t able to focus on what was best for my own growth at the time. Because of this, I moved out and found an apartment with two good friends of mine in the area, one of which I had lived with before and who just so happened to have gone through a similar breakup as my own around the exact same time as myself.

After moving, I soon lost touch with both my ex-boyfriend (who recently moved halfway across the country), as well as the new guy who basically got tired of falling for someone he couldn’t “crack” as he so delicately worded it. 

For the first time in many, many years, I was completely and utterly alone… or so I thought.

I no longer had a man to occupy my thoughts, which at first was so difficult I cried myself to sleep thinking I had “messed up.” Maybe I had messed up a few things, maybe I could have done some things differently, but I didn't and it was time to get up, stop crying over a boy, and start living for me. With that mountain of a mindset finally conquered, I suddenly found my life enriched with other things; things that I wanted to do. I went out with my friends, I worked, and I came home at night to enjoy a glass of wine with the roommate who had also been through the situation similar to my own. It was comforting to have a friend I lived with and related to, not to mention it helped me feel stronger about the decision I had made to be single. I was, finally, happy.

One night, while talking and drinking wine with my roommate, we began to talk about how far we had come. I mean, only a year ago we were both breaking up with the “loves of our life” and wondering if we had made the right decisions. Now, we were both sitting there together as strong, confident women who were completely content with our current relationship status as single. It was a good feeling and I knew that I owed a lot of my new found sense of freedom to the strong bonds of friendship I had surrounded myself with. Who knows where I would have been without my friends, especially my roommate who had become a friend I was able to come home to every night and talk about my day with or just get support from.

I couldn’t help but wonder what women who don’t have this strong bond with female friends do when they break up with someone. Days are long and nights can be lonely after you lose someone you have shared a day-to-day life with, I know this first hand. There were many times I might have given in to my ex’s request and “tried again” had I not had a close friend to grab dinner with and vent to. I felt sad for women who didn’t have that and I felt like I owed them a place to go so that they, too, could find support-even if it was just an online space to read and share similar stories with other women. Single women deserved a voice and I wanted to give them one.

Currently, most of what I have found online for single women are dating websites. What about those of us who don’t want to date right now? I know I’ll be in that dating mindset again eventually but right now I just want to broaden my group of friends and get to know ME and what I want. I think every woman deserves to give herself a strong group of other female friends and deserves to figure out exactly what it is she wants and where she’s going. I don't plan on being single forever and I welcome ANY woman to read my blogs and join in on the discussions because while I am gearing this towards single women, I want women to continue to come here to read and discuss no matter what their relationship status happens to be. The main point I am trying to get across with this blog is that no matter what your relationship status happens to be, you need to make life about you and you need to build connections with other females because after any relationship with your significant other ends, your friends are the people you will always fall back on for support.

This is my first blog and it will be a growing and learning experience but I hope that we can all grow stronger together through this. I’ll be posting periodically, so read up and please participate in discussion via the comments section following each post. Also, check out the Single Life tab for a little daily encouragement via quotes, articles, and pictures, as well as the Events tab for a weekly dose of what’s going on in Atlanta (sorry, keeping it local to my city for now).

And I almost forgot, you’re probably wondering why a blog geared towards single women is called “Made With Raine” aren’t you? Well, rain is typically associated with a dark time in your life, a time when you feel like you have little hope. I felt that it was during this “dark” time in my life that I found out who I was and what I wanted. It was during this “rain” that I made myself who I wanted to be. Therefore, I was made with rain. The odd spelling of “rain” as “Raine” is in reference to my dog’s name: Raine. Sounds silly, I suppose, but anyone with a dog knows they are your immediate best friend and always there for you. So, not only was I made with “rain,” I was also made with “Raine.” 

I look forward to hearing feedback from everyone. Good luck on your journey!

-A