I cannot remember a time when I have been anything other than single. I can count my number of dates on less than one hand. I can count the number of relationships I’ve ever been in on even less than that because the number is, well, none. My ability to flirt or recognize when someone is flirting with me is magnificently atrocious. I’m the girl that since middle school has been told by every single one of her friends that they can’t wait for the day that I’m in a relationship.
The majority of the time I genuinely don’t even think about my lack of a relationship status. Usually, it isn’t a fact that really bothers me. I go to the movies alone. I go to coffee shops alone. I go to the mall alone. I’ve gotten pretty comfortable being alone. That is until I tell someone I’m 21-years-old and have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. All of a sudden, a look of complete and utter shock covers their face, and I hear that lovely phrase, “You’ll find someone someday.”
I completely understand that this is meant to be a phrase of reassurance, but I never consider the option that I may never actually find someone someday until that phrase is brought up. Then suddenly for a solid few days after, I will be stuck in this ditch of emotional loneliness that seems impossible to crawl out of. My lack of a relationship is never weird to me until it’s weird to someone else. I never think about the possibility of dying alone surrounded by cats until someone attempts to assure me out of nowhere that it couldn’t possibly happen to me.
Courtesy: Hannah Brencher Creative
Once upon a time, never having a significant other did bother me. It bothered me in middle school when everyone around me was getting into their first relationships and I was at home doing algebra homework. It bothered me when I was in high school and never got asked to a single dance. It bothered me when I graduated high school and realized I was an actual real-life adult who’d never been asked on a date by anyone who was sober. At the time, this made me feel like I constantly wasn’t good enough, like there had to be something wrong with me that was stopping anyone I ever thought was cute from trying to be with me. That I was too intimidating or too obnoxious or too much of a you know what. And it took a long time for me to stop thinking like that and to be comfortable in my loneliness.
So, it gets very annoying to me when someone I barely know, who has been in serious relationship after serious relationship since seventh grade, feels the need to assume that I must still be in that phase of my life. As though being single is an eternal struggle that is wearing down on my heart every day and I have to find a significant other in order to ascend and live out a full life. I can live out a full life on my own. I can be a full person all by myself.
Do I sometimes get jealous of my friends who are in happy, fulfilling relationships? Of course, because even though I’m alright with where I am, I’m aware that I have completely no clue as to what that feels like and I want to. Would I love to find someone worth my time to spend it with? Sure, but that will never be the center point of my life.