I am the girl who’s always planned her life. And throughout my life I have had an unspoken and mostly metaphorical checklist pertaining to it. I’ve never actually written it down, because it seems like a waste of paper. But I have it memorized and can list off the categories with ease. They’re the keys to what I believe will make my life perfect, or at least as close to perfect as one can get.
At this very moment in my life, I have all but one checked off. The great school and good grades categories have always been cleared for landing thankfully. And I have luckily had a great relationship with my mom and other members of my family so no problems there. It took a little while, but I’ve finally settled with various groups of people who I can honestly call my closest friends.
I’m religious, so my relationship with God is important to me and recently I’ve gotten involved with an organization that can get me as close as I was with Him when I was still a student at my private Christian high school. I’ve pretty much always known who I was as a person and have had confidence in myself for a long time so I’m thankful for that. And the road to the future career I very much want looks likes smooth sailing here on out.
But then there’s the last category. This one has been prematurely marked off then furiously erased since my first serious crush in middle school. And recently I thought I had it when I started my first relationship last semester, but that ended in disaster two weeks in. I don’t know what to call it, but it really wasn’t much of a relationship.
So now, I’ve decided to remove the category entirely. I’m taking “boyfriend” off my checklist of life.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been the girl who “needed” a boyfriend and I still don’t. My problem has always been that I’ve wanted one far too much.
Growing up I watched shows about girls in middle school and high school on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Constantly were relationships, romance, and boyfriends brought up during individual plots in different episodes. And foolishly that’s what I expected my high school life to be like. I never wanted the singing and dancing from High School Musical, I just wanted my own Troy Bolton when I got to high school.
I don’t blame Little Me for the mindset. If princess movies built around a romance, kid TV shows with romantic plots, and Rom Coms were all you really watched growing up its not so hard to believe that that is what you’d think life would be like even if it was only a little bit.
But now that I’m in my second semester of college, I’m realizing that all the time I’ve spent looking for Mr. Right could have been spent doing things that don’t frustrate me and cause me to talk for hours on end about my boy trouble to my best friends and my mother.
I love writing, fashion, and reading. But I haven’t gone shopping in forever. I have bought books, but haven’t read any of them. And only recently have I started writing more, but that is only about a thousand or so more words than before.
And to focus on the last one, if I want to be a writer that habit is not going to work. I need to buckle down and get stuff done. A fifty-thousand-word novel is not going to write itself while I’m out scoping boys.
People have constantly told me to sit back and wait for it to happen. One of my closest friends even emphasizes that it’s called “falling in love” for a reason, you don’t expect to fall.
I always ask what I’m supposed to do in the meantime and they tell me to focus on myself. In all honesty, I can’t do that. As an only child, focusing on myself has been a big part of my life. I was only kid in my house all the time so I had to find myself to be content. The searching for a guy is not because I don’t like spending time by myself, it’s because I’ve done it for the past sixteen years. I know myself, I want to get to know someone else.
So instead I’m going to focus on my future, not myself. I’ll write my novel and finally finish it. Read the books that I’ve bought and seek inspiration while I enjoy the story. Go shopping, even of the window variety, more often and rotate my wardrobe cause a fashion journalist needs a drop dead gorgeous one. And I’ll get closer to God all the while, which is something I’ve been meaning to do. Now I have the chance.
For the first time in my life, I will sit back and stop looking for Mr. Right and let him come to me. Because to be completely honest with you, my feet are tired and I need the break.