I discovered the most unnerving thing as I drove home from coffee and a movie with a high school friend I hadn’t seen in years Sunday night. I was not okay with being single. For weeks, I’d been itching to text someone – a guy, say – to see how they were doing, how their day went, if they’d like to meet for Italian food and a nice chat later. The only problem was that I didn’t actually have a guy to text all these things to. Well, that’s not entirely true. Okay, I didn’t actually have a guy I wanted to get to know better in that way to text all these things to. “I know how you feel,” Emily told me over the phone as I drove.
“I mean, I read all the time that you’re not ready for a relationship until you’re okay with being by yourself, but I just can’t help it. I WANT someone. I want to find someone. I just don’t know how to do it. I mean, my one foray into that area was totally unsuccessful.”
“Well, to be completely honest,” Em said, “you still have time.”
“I know, I know. I’m only 22, and I keep telling myself that I’m still young and that I shouldn’t even be worrying about it, but I do. I do worry about it.”
“Well, I don’t think you should worry about it.”
“Well, maybe worry is the wrong word. I just think about it along. I concern myself with it. On the one hand, I think of myself and feel that I’m on a good track in terms of where I am in life, and when I hear that yet another person I graduated high school with has gotten married I think, ‘Why in bloody hell are you getting married already? We’re the same age!’ And then, I see these people and I think, ‘Screw them and their happy lives.’ It’s completely unsavory, I know, but it’s how I feel.”
I think this all has to do with an encounter with a certain someone that happened early August, something that I vowed not to talk about again, so I will refrain from getting into more detail, even though I’ve already linked to the post once already in this entry. But I think that’s what this is all about. The fact that I could have someone to talk to, but don’t because I acted weird about it. In the future, I see myself as someone who can go home to her computer and her writing and her books, and feel completely satisfied until Mr. Right comes along, but then I find myself in said future lying in bed with a Seagram’s declaring my hate for romantic comedies after watching No Strings Attached.
The problem is that as long as I’ve known myself, I’ve never been okay with being single. Except for maybe in elementary school when I threatened to kick my future crush because he picked on my best friend. Since fifth grade when boys and girls started noticing each other in that way, I’ve had a hard time with being “alone.” I mean, there must be some reason why God has not brought a guy into my life. I would like to think it’s because He has plans for me to turn into a kick-ass Hermione or Katniss. And maybe that is what He wants out of me. Maybe He wants me to grow some lady balls and know how to handle things without feeling like a beaten dog with its tail stuck under its butt all the time.
For what it’s worth, I do think there’s something to learning to be single before learning to be coupled, and believe me, I wish I could get to that place. When I think about myself, I like to think of myself as the kind of person who is totally okay being at home alone, munching on an apple over the latest scene in my work-in-progress without feeling like I’m missing something. I would love to walk through my house and not feel like I’m meandering aimlessly through the same hallways pretending like I’m up to something important and productive when I’m really just sulking.
Anyways, I had to get that off my chest. I know that I’m only 22, and that I do have a time left to find someone, and that it will happen when it is right, but I just had to get that gunk out of my system. It’s like mucus, having problems being single. Before you know it, it’s clogged your cavities and you can’t breathe properly, and the next thing you know you’re knocked out on the floor from taking too much nasal decongestant.
