Kate Iselin: What I learnt during a year of being single

WHAT would you do if you were single for a year? Cry? Disappear? Kate Iselin spent a year single. This is what happened.

Kate Iselin has been single for a year. This is what happened in the last twelve months.

AS YOU read this, I will have been single for approximately one year, three days, and six hours.

Not that I’m counting, of course.

This isn’t my first time being single after a sad break-up, and honestly, if my dating track record is anything to go by, it won’t be my last.

Heartbreak, as I have come to learn, is one of life’s inevitabilities; along with food poisoning, getting negged by a hot guy, and watching ticket inspectors board the train you’re on after deciding you can totally get away without topping up your Opal card this one time.

A year ago, when I had just broken up with my ex and my heart was tender and raw and resembled an undercooked poached egg that had been inexplicably run over by several cars on the freeway, I dragged myself out of bed and sat in front of the mirror and told myself that I had exactly one week to be as sad as I wanted.

I could cry, I could mope around the house, I could spend all day in bed if I wanted to, but after one week, I had to return to my normal life, even if it felt like the last thing I wanted to do.

And then I got right back up from sitting in front of that mirror and crawled back in to bed, where I spent the next seven days crying so hard that I burst a blood vessel in my eye.

True to my word, on the eighth day I got out of bed, showered, and started going through the motions once again. I returned calls from worried friends. I responded to work emails from concerned bosses. My housemate took me to the pub across the road and graciously allowed me to spend hours recounting the last few months of my relationship to her, as I angrily swigged from a glass of rosé and jammed wedges in to my mouth.

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I spent the next few months indulging in every break-up cliché imaginable. I bought a yoga mat and unrolled it on my bedroom floor, forcing myself in to each contorted position with the attitude of someone trying to build a flat-pack shelf from all the wrong parts. I started running again, deliberately choosing a route through the dodgiest parts of town, speeding past figures that stepped out from the shadows as I blasted AC/DC through my headphones.

I dyed my hair black for some reason. I tried to learn French. I volunteered to be a part of an art installation project that saw me standing on the terrace of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, using a blowtorch to burn a gift that my ex had given me while Baby, I’m Burnin’ by Dolly Parton played on repeat in the background.

I went through it, honey.

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It’s important to note that at no point was any of this behaviour motivated by happiness. Sure, happiness was sometimes an incidental by-product of things that I did, but when I think back to myself at that time and how small and desperately terrified I felt, I think I was mostly searching for something that would make me feel safe and stable again, after losing the one person whose very presence would make me feel safe and stable no matter where I was.

So like a wrestler bouncing from one side of the ring to another, I flung myself up against all of my comfort zones to see how elastic they were, and if there was anything good waiting for me on the other side.

Was there relief lying at the bottom of a bottle of wine? Was it in, like, a hair dye packet? Could I find it swiping through a dating app or lying alone in my bed, shaking and paranoid, after being awake for thirty-six hours straight? I could not. But that didn’t stop me from trying.

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If I could somehow go back in time and speak to that version of myself a year ago, I don’t think there’s anything I would advise her to do differently, because everything that she did eventually brought me to where I am now.

If anything, I’m impressed by how tough she was: how tough I managed to be. I never knew I was strong enough to tell everyone in my life how weak I felt, to have to explain again and again why my life had fallen in to seemingly unmanageable chaos and to ask the people around me for help in rebuilding it.

For a long time, I thought I could only ‘recover’ from being heartbroken once I made myself impervious to ever experiencing it again. If I could somehow find the key to closing myself off to all negative feelings and emotions, then I could turn my back on my experience of heartbreak and consider it a success. I know now that that isn’t true.

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The only way to stop my heart from being broken again is to never use it; and missing out on all the sad emotions that come with a break-up isn’t worth missing all the good ones that come with being in a relationship. I refuse to sacrifice companionship, fun, support, and happiness so I can avoid the discomfort of sadness. What I have to offer in a relationship is too good and too strong for me to keep it hidden away for fear of rejection. Will I be heartbroken again in my life? Probably. But will it be worth it? Most definitely.

— Kate Iselin is a writer and sex worker. Continue the conversation on Twitter @kateiselin