It was January. I was nineteen, and I had never been kissed.
I made a New Year’s resolution this year based on this fact, and that resolution was that I would kiss a guy by the end of the year. My goal, however, was to have that happen before the specific day of December 30. You see, that’s my birthday, and this coming birthday will be my twentieth which seemed a major milestone of years. Along with a kiss being my goal, there were also some special restrictions/regulations on how I would meet my goal. Most important of these rules was that “the kiss” had to be romantic in some way shape or form. I couldn’t just get drunk and kiss some random guy at a party. I had to actually be interested in him; I had to feel some kind of connection.
I was not alone in making this resolution either. One of my best friends also set this as her goal. Our aims in deciding upon this were not as shallow as they may seem. What we were really after was putting ourselves out there. More and more, as we would speak about our progress throughout the first few months of trying to get closer to those we thought could be the one or musing about the boys we had left at home, we came to realize that we really just needed to put ourselves out there. We had been playing our lives too safely out of fear of rejection.
My own fear of rejection, embarrassment, and awkwardness had resulted in much sadder scenarios than my friend’s. While she had never really felt much connection with anyone before and so hadn’t been held back in specific instances, I had had a crush on the same boy for seven years of my life. This crush did not only span the playground romances we giggle about while coloring with our friends, I spent years longing after him from the fifth through eleventh grades. I had a crush on this boy before, after, and even during puberty! How does that even happen?
Now you may be asking, what came of this crush? The answer to that question is unfortunately put with a single word answer. Nothing. I never told him. \I never put myself out there in any way besides musing with my closest friend about what it would be like if I could ever tell him how I felt. I’m no therapist, so I won’t try to evaluate my inner psyche to find out what fear was so paralyzing as to take up seven years of my otherwise happy life, but I will say that it didn’t end when the crush did.
It came with me to college, and so my resolution was made in the hope that if I voiced to someone who could hold me accountable to my goal that I was going to put myself out there, I would. The cursed love life I saw myself as having led would come to an end, and I would be a whole new me. I would be a girl who wouldn’t have to wonder what might’ve been. I would know that I had taken a shot at what I thought would make me happy. I would be proud of myself. I wouldn’t have to be embarrassed to admit to others that I was a sophomore in college and had never even been close to any kind of romantic involvement.
But it’s September now. Nothing has happened. Correction: I still haven’t kissed a boy and the advances I made on the one boy I actually liked landed me very deeply in the friend zone (let me mention, though, that I highly value that spot and love every moment spent there).
What did happen, though, is that I discovered something. First, that it’s really not that big of a deal! I love myself, and valuing yourself as less simply because your life isn’t on the same schedule as someone else’s is just wrong. My first kiss is going to be something I always remember and letting the pressures of thinking about society’s opinion rush me into something that’s not right would be a real shame. I’m going to wait. My first kiss is going to happen in the right place, at the right time, with the right person if there’s anything I can do about it. And there is. I get to choose when it happens, not the imaginary person in my head that judges me.
Also, it is completely irrational to believe in any way that just because you haven’t been in love yet means that you will be alone forever. My going to be twenty and having never had my first kiss is not indicative of my future state as one who has never loved at all rather than loved and accepted the possibility of loss.
Additionally, as cliche as it may sound, waiting for the right person to come along beats rushing it. My love life is not a race. Even if it were, who am I competing against? Certainly not myself, and rushing things would only be hurting myself. I have heard too many stories of wonderful people being rushed into things that they later regret to know to listen to the moral of those hard-earned lessons.
I also don’t need a boyfriend right now. I really like how everything in my life is going. I’m happy with my friends, my studies, and my family. Sure, a relationship with the right person would be a blessing, but that’s something that will come with time. Being patient is a virtue, and it’s one I could always use a little more of.
Plus, I’m not alone. Even though society has programmed me to think that I am in the minority and that is some awful and embarrassing thing to be a part of, it’s really not. Someone needs to break the stigma that people who haven’t been in a relationship are weird, lame, or inferior. I can work a little ways towards that by refusing to be embarrassed. So I will.
So that’s where I am. It’s September and I am 19 years and 9 months old. That has nothing to do with the fact that I haven’t been kissed. It’s just two facts about me. I’m cool with it. Let me just say, though, that none of this is to say that I should remain terrified of rejection. I should put myself out there because I’m awesome. We all are. Someone is going to be really lucky to have us, and we’re going to be just as lucky to have them. We’re all worthy of love, and we will get it. We just can’t manipulate something so beyond us. It’ll just happen. All we can do is be open to it.