If You Want To Truly Be Okay With Being Single Then Read This

A movie came out earlier this year called “How To Be Single”.

I haven’t seen it yet, I just know it’s got the “Fifty Shades Of Grey” chick and “Fat Amy” and the plot is probably about a single woman who recently got out of a sour relationship and now she’s learning how to be ‘single’ one one-night-stand at a time. Probably. I’d like to be wrong.

This world confuses me. The way we empower single women (and men for that matter) by encouraging them to engage in loose sex and brief flings because that’s what being ‘unattached’ means. It means freedom and frivolity and pleasuring ourselves.

It’s funny how we’ve twisted those things, freedom and whatnot. It’s funny how we think being single means throwing ourselves away instead of finding out who are and embracing it.

I’m learning how to be single.

Really single.

Not rom-com single, but real deal, facing life one step at a time single, and in some ways, that’s kinda scary.

I’ve never seen myself the ‘single’ type. I’m too dependent on other people and too in love with the idea of love to fully embrace that. I was the girl who wanted Prince Charming to roll up in his Ford Escape on my 18th birthday and whisk me away to his castle in the south–the kind that has a wraparound porch.

Life hasn’t gone the way I imagined it would back when I was 16, both realistically and not. The beauty of that however, is the immense freedom I’ve discovered since allowing myself to drop my haughty agendas and be open to what life had to offer. It’s a terrifying, exhilarating way of life. Still, it’s hard to let some dreams die. I continue to harbor a small amount of self-resentment for not “making” something of myself by now, and truth be told, if and when Prince Charming does eventually roll up, I might punch him for taking a wrong turn six years ago.

I suppose learning to be okay with myself is learning to have grace with myself as well. That’s really what being single is. Or at least, what it should be. Not a process of self waste, but learning who you are and giving this world the best version of it one day at a time.

It’s learning what your thing is–and we ALL have a thing, sometimes two, sometimes ten. It’s learning to do what makes you a better you, because being ourselves is a gift to society in ways I don’t think we will ever fully recognize this side of heaven. It’s finding faith, and growing closer to those who inspire and ignite the passions inside you.

And yeah, some days it hurts.

For every step I’m taking in learning to be okay doing this single thing for awhile, there are moments where Coffeeshop Hottie sits next to me reading The Confessions Of St. Augustine, and you really want him to look over and ask you to go get an Oreo Ice Cream Sundae with him because why the hell not (if you’re reading over my shoulder bro, hit a girl up), but just like marriage being a continual learning

process, so is singlehood. Nothing happens overnight. Not the perfect relationship, and certainly not becoming the best version of yourself.

And who knows. Knowing Jesus’ sense of humor, I’m gonna write this and Coffeeshop Hottie and/or some other guy is gonna waltz into my life and change everything. Point is, I want to be in the place where I am absolutely, 100% okay if that doesn’t and NEVER DOES happen.

Learning to be single is finding your worth and realizing that it isn’t completed by anyone. Complemented, challenged and encouraged, absolutely, but never completed. You were complete the day you were born. All your quirks and oddities and, yes, thoughts. The thoughts that make you tick, your style, the way you laugh and the way you see life. That is your true value.

And I pray it happens for all of us. We find someone who stumbles upon some version of us and wants to tag along. Even it it doesn’t, learn to be happy being you. You’re dang good at it.