Being Alone
I have been single basically all of my life. A dalliance with a crush here and there but mostly just like soul-crushing rejection.
My expectation of love is as grand as the romantic comedies I was spoon-fed as a child. I want my person and to be in love and live this life side by side with my best friend. This dream is only encouraged by my own parents who had met when they were 15 and are married today 50 years later.
Yet the pool I look for these grand fish in is shallow and filled with duds. As a fat girl, I have been trained by society to think that I should be lucky to have just anyone… even one of those duds. So I have tried to accommodate who I am to appease and attract these duds. I have pretended to like football and video games. I have laughed at some truly meh jokes and I have been talked down to and interrupted without standing up for myself more times than I would admit to anyone. I have given myself away like this, and in many ways, I have not said here in the great hopes of finding my soul mate.
Without them here, I have done actually pretty well. I have built two careers. I have traveled the world alone. I have chased my dreams. I have built a life that I like but some days loneliness does ache inside of me. And on those days, I get weak for that old dream that has caused me to abandon myself over and over again. I get on the apps. I feel myself start to appease duds when we have talked for a while and they have yet to ask me a question about myself. And I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t put myself through this cycle anymore.
The thing about getting to be alone is that I get to be alone with the best person I know… me. That might sound egotistical but like fuck you. It has taken me 38 years and a global pandemic to finally appreciate my own company. I get it done! I make money to pay my rent, I do things that make myself happy, and I take myself on adventures whether it walks, binging a tv show, or learning something new - every day! I know what turns me on and I allow myself access to it via my imagination and a vibrator. And most importantly, I make myself laugh every fucking day which is probably very weird but as I said before, fuck you! I am enjoying falling in love with myself after years of hating myself because of how other people saw me.
If you’re someone stuck in the neverending cycle of singleness, I am here to tell you that it is okay to take a break and just really enjoy being alone. It feels like sweet freedom when you realize that you are the person you have been looking for. Like the wise one Lizzo says, “I'm my own soulmate”.