Apparently, Oxford dictionary has updated the meaning of the word single. Here goes, single: I am looking for a partner, so my life is currently on hold, please try again later. Now, I’m that girl who always has a problem with things and this definition doesn’t quite sit right with me.
A lot things don’t make sense to me but what has me more perplexed than the latter these days is how a couple’s cute date night reel on Instagram makes us think we’re missing out or leaves you feeling a little blue, even if it made your shoulders shrug down to where they usually sit as you let out an ‘I want that’ sigh. No seriously, just think about that for a second. I feel like giving you a hug because our brains have been moulded that way, the world around us has convinced us we are lacking something. Essentially, if you’re not with someone and recreating those relationship-y moments, it’s sad and pitiful?
As with everything, you know in this grand, but somehow still small, world that you’re never the only one. We’ve all been wired in this hard to figure out, harder to undo kind of sense and I don’t know how to reverse my own psychology, let alone tell you what to do about yours, which is why I don’t to preach. This is not a virtual leaflet on how to be content without getting a good morning text from your bae. To put it plainly, I think it’s high time we normalise being HAPPILY single, because it’s recently dawned upon me that there’s no feeling like liberation in every sense possible and I’ve been taking that for granted.
Social media. The way I grew up. My surroundings. Blah blah. I could quickly jump the gun and blame my ungratefulness on a handful of things right now. When the circle of thought completes itself nonetheless, I come back to me. It all starts and ends with people like me. We’re everywhere, some of us secreted in the corners and some of us in plain sight, yet somehow everyone seems to be convinced if you aren’t with someone you are not only alone, but lonely. Riding off into the sunset on your own isn’t as heaven-sent, it’s got to be with a star-crossed lover!
Relationships, romantic ones to be specific here, are amazing. I’m not saying they’re not. My parents have been married for coming up to twenty five years and I have yet to find a love so pure between two people who aren’t them. Love is love, you can’t help who you fall for and who you want to spend your time with. All of that is on the other side of the table when I lay out a dinner serving the issues of someone who hasn’t got that, whether it be by choice or by fate.
For me, it’s a choice. I choose myself. I want to find out what I’m into, why I like Nepalese food so much and spend every bit of my unspent, untamed energy on me. Someone else’s love can’t complete me more than a Sunday of ME time; Amy Winehouse and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan galore as I clean (I love cleaning…please don’t stop reading) and stirring an oversized portion of Red Thai Chicken curry, surprising myself by emptying the bowl every week, regardless of the bet I make with literally no one that I won’t be able to finish it this time.
So yes, it’s my own company that I look forward to most. My friends and family are a close second and even though I have more awesome friends now than ever, I still want more positive and energetic people in my life. My family have pushed above and beyond to raise me to the best standard and my chosen family open my mind up in ways I didn’t even realise were closed. I’m truly living my best life. Flashbacks from the past waft in the air between all my thoughts, like a sour smell and I try to think of time I ever felt like this with a guy. I immediately feel trapped, like I’ve been forced into a glass box topped with water. I have to stay there because I’ve been told to, I’m convincing myself it’s okay. I just want out.
Maybe I haven’t met the right guy you’ll say and to that I say, please let me not meet him right now, or at least until I’ve become familiar with the full me. Let me feel each day with more than I felt the last and love myself without a hint of toxicity from anyone. Let there be peace in my chaos and not be set up with anyone for the sake of society. I don’t want to settle down, I’m nineteen!!!
You and I, we’re all puzzles. We keep changing and pieces of the puzzle get bigger, it’s all a lead up to the final picture you see, so the challenge to solve only increases with time. Some of us like keeping the unmatched fragments in a box and helping others bind their picture whilst they do the same with ours, like a harmony you have to work on. This could last forever or fall apart, it’s magical even if you’re the only one finishing what you both started because you look at your picture at the end of the day and smile at the times you felt pain. For the rest of us however, it’s all in disarray, perhaps in a unique and desultory manner the pieces lay, shifting them together every day. People say we need help, they feel bad for us because they think we need a harmony, a sort of fixation to take the puzzle out of the puzzle. That’s the beauty of it though. It can take longer, it can drain you out and you might even be convinced at some points that it could be easier if you stopped being so stubborn; you could take your incomplete art and finish it with another. It’s okay if you want to do that. My problem is, I don’t like anything that comes easy and why should I? You have the full right and potential to not just put together the puzzle, but paint a whole damn picture of it, all on your own and no one can you otherwise!
