I’m So Goddamn Sick Of Trying To Have My Single Girl Sh*t Together

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I hope. Oh, how I hope. On the good days I can write you a ream of words that start from my fucking hope. But then, on days like today, when I’ve woken up to the sound of my next door neighbour’s orgasm, and then laughter, and that kissing sound, before my alarm has even trilled for my 6.30 a.m. start, it’s hard.

Lonely.

My heart aches to wake up next to somebody.

Somebody I love.

In that sense, I’m grieving for something I’ve never really known.

I’ve been single for a long time, and I’m good at it. I live in Bali, because I can. Just packed up my life in London and left, because I could. Before that I lived in Russia. Before that, Rome. I don’t own a lot of stuff because I never stay in one place for long, and I wonder almost every day if I am doing it because I am looking for my guy.

I don’t need saving from myself.

Don’t need a knight in shining armour.

I have my own money. Friends. Sense of adventure.

The online articles tell me I can’t love somebody else til I love myself. Well. I adore myself. I’ve done the work. Am proud of who I am and what I believe and what I am capable of. Not arrogant. Just… not broken. I don’t need anyone to “fix” me. I’ve felt this way for a while. Ready, is probably the word. So what gaping hole of self-improvement am I missing if still he eludes me?

I talk to strangers. Smile. Do things that scare me because that’s how you stay open, right?

I meet guys. Date them. One date or three, a week or a month-long romance that fizzles out because…

Because why?

Because he’s not the right one. I’m not the right one.

And so on I go, meeting more people, doing more scary things, ploughing on across the world, where I silently ask strangers on the street, Is it you? Or you?

I have an accountant and work out and make mistakes and call my mother regularly. Aren’t those the things we look for? Accountability? Kindness? Self-awareness? Isn’t like supposed to attract like? So where is my like?

Maybe I’m single because I ask so many questions.

I’m pushing on in my life, finding the joy and the pleasure and the laughter wherever I can, and for incredible slabs of time I feel elated, thrilled to be alive. Enough. And then I hear the happiness of somebody else, and I realize: I want to be vulnerable like that. Relieve the pressure that falls on my shoulders because they’re the only shoulders there. I want to wake up to a breath on my neck, heavy and sweaty arm around my waist. I want to yell at somebody with my morning breath because they stole all the covers again. I want a morning orgasm not delivered from my own hand.

I do such a good job, most days, of not missing having a somebody, but on days like today I’m just so goddamn sick of having to have my single girl shit together.