5 Great reasons to be happily single for the holidays

Or, “What Lara keeps telling herself in order to make it to her birthday in April 2009 without crawling under a rock.”

I’ve been working really hard on this, because last Christmas was a royal, heartbreaking disaster for me. I mean, it’s going down in the history books as one of my top 3 worst ever Christmasses.

And it was really and truly all because of the man in my life. No one died, no one went into the hospital, but my entire life was so screwed up last year. I refuse to ever let that happen to me again.

Here are my top reasons to be happy being single this holiday season… Please share yours in the comments!

1. One less person to fight with. About anything. There’s no struggling with family holiday schedules, no arguments about who’s spending what on who, and who’s name gets put on the card for the nieces and nephews. There’s no flying around from house to house and arguing about how much time to spend with each other’s families. No fighting to get one person to go to someone’s house they don’t want to go to. Which brings me to #2…
2. Spending quality time with friends and family. I have some amazing best friends that suffered along with me silently through Christmas 2007. They would listen to my cries, support me 1000%, and never verbally complain that they didn’t get to see me. Okay, they would, but it was rare. I was spending so much time with him and his family, that I really did neglect my own friends and family. It’s something that I feel downright disgusted with myself for, and this year has shown me how blessed I really am, because they forgave me. Even my goddaughter, at the wonderful age of 6-going-on-30, was most excited to bake cookies with me the other day. I’ve seen more love pour out of that little girl’s eyes in one sugar cookie’d day, than I did in 8 months from him. I wouldn’t trade that for the entire world on one massive plate of biscotti if my life depended on it.
3. No broken expectations. I’m not anticipating ANYTHING. I’m not hoping for some sure sign of love, some beautiful gift that I was promised but never received. I’m not planning for a beautiful day of traveling between homes and families only to have it end with a vicious argument with someone who professes to love me but would rather tell me that I’m “the biggest piece of shit ever”.
4. More money to spend on others. Money’s tight, and I really love the fact that I don’t have to be out there searching for “the perfect gift”. It doesn’t need to be said, but we all know that we tend to spend the most on our boyfriend/girlfriend (of course, when there aren’t kids involved) and instead, I was able to get my parents and my friends (and my godkids!) more wonderful gifts because I saved $200 on not buying a GPS unit for the man in my life.
5. Being fun, flirty, and fabulous at parties. Now, I don’t go to many, because I work for myself and most of my “coworkers” are in other parts of the country and world, but I get to be this outrageous person that gets silly and flirty when I go out with friends or what have you. No harm, no foul, right?

Now, of course, after the holidays, after the New Year, we singletons are going to be faced with probably the worst ever holiday for being single there is… Valentine’s Day. I’m personally making it my mission to work harder at Being Fabulous all for myself, and will let whatever (and maybe whoever) comes my way just be what it is. I’m not ruling out the idea of having a valentine, because it’s just not in my nature to give up hope (though sometimes I think that it’d be easier). But for now I get to actually enjoy the blessings of family, friends and the spirit of Christmas all by my little single self. And I like that.