Being Single Is Not A Handicap

I think there’s a plausible chance that I will, indeed, be single forever, and I’m not sure that it’s such a horrible thing. I can already feel the eye rolls coming through the internet. But it’s true: I’m just not sure I’m someone who someone else deserves. I’m not sure that I can give myself to someone without knowing that they will indefinitely give themselves to me, and I’m not sure that I’ll ever find that. I’m not sure I’m ready to take the (calculated, but still flimsy) risk of putting my emotional eggs in one basket. I realized it last night in a hot yoga class, and it washed over me concisely and clearly and I cried a little, and when it came to meditating at the end, I cried a lot. It was dark, so I don’t think anyone saw. I do yoga for my spirit, not my body, and I like to think that that’s the point of doing it: to work out feelings you didn’t know, and to find balance, and to see with clarity. For context: I have been heavily medicated in dealing with some serious issues for a little over a year, and my body was entirely numbed to everything: including crying. To be doing so in public was something I had not even had the inkling of a sensation for, and so this is something significant for me.

Do I know what will happen in the future? Of course not. Could there be someone around the corner for me? Of course. But that’s not the point. Even if all those beautiful ideas were true, I have realized that it’s not something I can thoroughly depend upon, and what’s better is that, it’s not something I have to.

I think it’s another silly societal nuance, the idea that everybody is cut out for monogamy and a life-long relationship that begins in your early 20s, a time when you’re just first starting to get acquainted with yourself. It doesn’t mean you’re cold, or unloving, or closed off to people, it just means that there are people in the world who are better off giving their love to other things.

I believe that what I do for a living is what I am called to, I believe it is my purpose, and I know that I am just at the tip of the iceberg with it, and so I’m excited to see what happens next. But if I don’t come home at the end of the day to someone to have dinner with or to cry to about the stupid thing I’m stressed over or to hold before I fall asleep, I think I’ll be okay. Because I think we’ve been taught that these are the only real things worth living for, and the scary thing about that is, if you build your life around the idea that someone will always be there at the end of the day, you will be more alone than ever when you realize that they aren’t.

I’m not saying I don’t want to love someone, and that I don’t have that in me, I’m saying I just don’t know if it’s part of my path. I just cannot fathom someone genuinely wanting to be with me and sticking around even when things get difficult, and maybe I’m not supposed to. And I’m sick and tired of people telling me that I’ll be surprised, and that it will all come together eventually, as if things aren’t together right now, as if I’m not whole without a significant other. As if I say these things in the context of the idea that I need someone and I’m complaining about it. I am more “whole” than most of the people I know who are in “loving” relationships that are really emblems of co-dependency, need and attachment.

Maybe it’s time we stop trying to compartmentalize people and freak out when they don’t align with our socially pre-determined ideas. Maybe we’re not all meant to get married or have children or like one sex or another or be one gender or another and maybe we’re just supposed to live and be and learn and love who we love and stop letting these unnecessary stressors and “pillars of success” determine what we do with our lives.

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