It’s Friday night and I’m in sweats. I’m alone on my couch. I just inhaled a personal pizza. I’m halfway through my first cocktail. I’m listening to Norah Jones’s discography on shuffle. If I were trying to out-sad you, I’d tell you I was contemplating the beauty of the partially deflated balloon my roommate got for Valentine’s Day.

It’s sort just hovering around a single light. Sort of like that scene in American Beauty with the plastic bag being tossed around by the wind. Poetic, the way it mocks my loneliness.

Stoic helium balloon knows how you really feel

Just kidding. I’m not lonely. My pizza was delicious and my cocktail is refreshing. Vince offered to make me dinner tonight, but I declined. I’ve been craving a night to myself. I say that like I have this incredible social life. Really I’m just figuring out how to be an adult. I don’t know how they do it. I feel like I deserve a parade when I work a full day, go to the gym, shower, AND put my dirty clothes in the hamper.

But I’m not trying to out-sad you. I did that a few months ago, because I didn’t know how to deal with it. I use self-deprecation as a tool for self-preservation. I make fun of my loneliness and sadness before other people can ask me how I’m doing. Sort of like Fat Amy.

If you’ve been reading for a while or if you know me well enough, you know that about a year ago, I went through a breakup. I was sad and lonely for a big chunk of time. I drank too many whiskey drinks and listened to Ok Go too many times. I ate too much bread and just avoided looking in the mirror. While my roommate was out with her boyfriend, I would find myself sitting alone, unable to do anything but make fun of myself.

True story, just use the search bar to find all my posts on heartbreak and breakup and love and relationships and all those other uplifting topics.

The optimist in me says I was dealing with my situation head-on. But the realist in me knows I was denying the issue and pretending to be stronger than I actually was. But eventually I started to believe myself. I don’t know (or particularly care) what this says about me and my coping capabilities, but eventually I got through it – I became strong on my own. Now I value my alone time. Maybe a bit too much at times.

But you know what? All that matters tonight is how quickly I can get in bed with my heating pad for my hip (I skipped training last week, ran 3mi on Tuesday night, 3.5mi on Thursday and decided I was too cool for stretching), and start reading. And anyway, I’m being responsible. My boss requested I stay in.

Well, sort of.

The last time I volunteered to help her out on a Saturday morning project, she (and several of my coworkers) saw my painful recovery from the night I went to a rave. I was so out of it that morning that I didn’t have the mental capacity to lie about where I had been. So when a coworker asked what I had done the night before, I told her, “I went to a rave.” Now, almost two months later, they’re giving me crap for it, constantly making jokes about glowsticks and E.

I bet they’ll have a hard time thinking of something to tease me about when I tell them I read the last 130 pages of Gone Girl alone in my bed.