The Times When I Feel Most Single
I feel most single on a Saturday afternoon. That’s prime “I have a BF/GF” time, right? It’s when you don’t have a job distracting you, when you can finally unwind. But then you wake up with a pit in your stomach because you don’t really have anyone to spend it with. Your friends are spending time with their significant others and tell you that they’ll meet up with you later that evening. Saturday nights are great for spending with best friends. But daytime weekends are reserved for catching up with your lover in bed or at brunch or at the flea market. You close your eyes and wish for it to be nighttime already.
I feel most single on my birthday. I feel like it’s the one day of the year when you really need someone to just love you. You’ve earned it. It’s not even about turning an age older and worrying about marriage and kids or whatever. It’s about what happens when the party is over, when the guests leave and you’re left alone with some cake and a bummer smile. Happy birthday to you.
I feel most single in a room full of couples. I mean, no duh, right? It’s just staring you at the face—people who love each other—and they’re looking at you back with these empathetic eyes. These people used to relate to you, they used to also be single but now that they’re in relationships, it’s as if they’ve completely forgotten what it’s like to be alone. They behave as if they’ve always been with someone and never understood anything different. It has been like that for you too when you’ve gotten into a relationship so you can’t really criticize but still.
I feel most single when I’m going to an afternoon movie alone. This is an activity I admittedly love to do—nothing beats a solo movie experience at an indie theatre at two o’clock in the afternoon—but there’s always an undercurrent of sadness when you know it’s not necessarily a choice. Yes, you love going to movies alone but you also have no one to go with. Sometimes you flash forward twenty years and see yourself doing these same things alone. It doesn’t look so cute.
I feel most single when I’m sick. Someone come take care of me. Hello? Oh, right. No one is in love with me right now.
Sometimes I’m in relationships and sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m single by choice and sometimes I’m not. It’s hard to tell when one turns into the other. You’re single by choice until you’re not, until you look around and realize maybe you should’ve gotten one of those boyfriend things. Time moves by fast. This we know and this is what terrifies us—the idea that being single for three months can easily turn into two years without you ever really realizing it.
It’s amazing that we have the ability to be with someone and be consumed in love, and then completely alone. It seems so extreme. Like how do we deal with that? We obviously have no choice. I will always remember those feelings one has when you get into a relationship after a prolonged absence. You temporarily forget how to be someone’s plus one. And then it all comes flooding back to you. You put on your “In A Relationship” jeans and discover that they fit okay. Then you learn how to love someone else again. Just like riding a bike. Feels good, doesn’t it?