#can you believe I essentially wrote an AP English essay on my feelings about chronic singlehood

[musical-chick-13]

People talk a lot about how judgmental and patronizing people are to single people, how not being part of a romantic or sexual relationship doesn’t make you less than, that being single is a perfectly valid life choice, that people are tired of feeling like they have to be forced into relationships when they’d rather be romantically unattached.

But what happens when you’re single but still want to be in a relationship? When you are trying and wish to date someone, but just can’t find anyone.

I don’t really see anyone talking about that. So, since this is what I do with my blog regarding any topic no one else has written about the way I want, I’m going to.

Sometimes, the feeling of being alone really sucks. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge introvert, and I LOVE reading alone in my room at 2am and coming home from rehearsal, making tea, and locking my door, never to speak to another human until I have to do my job the next day.

But sometimes, I want someone to hold me, to kiss me, to go on dates with me and tell me I’m beautiful and loved and who gets me in a way no one else does. It’s not for lack of trying. I crush hard and relatively frequently, and it’s always been on good, reliable, single people I’m compatible with. And I have always made a habit to tell whomever I’m interested in that I have feelings for them (barring a few exceptions, like if said person gets into a new relationship before I have the chance to say anything). I’ve given the “nice guys” a chance because they were there and, well, even if I didn’t like them, I couldn’t find anything wrong with them. (Sidebar, you don’t actually owe anyone anything, you’re never under any obligation to go out with someone.) Dating websites really aren’t for me, though this revelation was achieved through a great deal of deliberate consideration. I meet a lot of different people of various opinions, life experiences, and sexualities through theatre, which is my job, but there still hasn’t been...well, anyone.

It’s not my fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Circumstances have just not lined up. It isn’t because I’m overly selfish or incompetent or too jealous or not talented enough or because people suck or are shallow and no one could ever find me attractive. A romantic relationship, as much as I want one, has simply never happened. And I would love, and I mean LOVE, to believe that isn’t a reflection on me, that it doesn’t mean anything, that it doesn’t affect my life in any significant way, but...well, it does.

Because on one side, I have all the people telling me that wanting to be paired up is buying into an idealized version of love, and that I am a so-called “bad feminist” for wanting to be in a romantic relationship, instead of being singularly focused on my career or friends. That wanting love outside of myself makes me weak or buys into the patriarchy or is a sign that I have been brainwashed by society and its archaic views.

And then I have the other side that gives me a pitiful look, an insincere and patronizing “Well, you’re still rather young, you’ll find someone,” a glare of poorly-disguised judgment. There is a subtle but distinct divide put up between them and me, the people who are “worldly,” who know their way around a relationship, who have experienced the feeling of wanting and being wanted back. A feeling which, apparently, makes it harder for them to meaningfully relate to me, having not personally experienced it. I am cut out of conversations at parties and while getting ready in dressing rooms because I have nothing to offer in regard to relationship gossip. It is automatically assumed during discussions of being an adult or dealing with mature topics that I cannot possibly know what I’m talking about because the lack of having had a romantic relationship somehow makes me completely naive and unable to offer advice or worthwhile personal anecdotes. I try to talk about the struggles of dating, and no one can relate to me because they all have experience that I, for a variety of reasons, simply lack.

And this...can easily take its toll on a person. Sometimes, I feel very lonely, not because I need someone with me at all times or think that being romantically involved is Super Important Above All Else, but simply because I am cut off from a part of life and personal experience (or conversely, enlightened singlehood and active rejection of that experience) most people seem to have.

I do not personally know one single person with any capacity for romantic attraction who has also never been in a relationship, and while I would, ideally, take the opportunity to celebrate my uniqueness among my circle of friends and acquaintances because my uniquenesses are, by definition, what make me me, all it has done is make me feel isolated, pathetic, and alone.

I don’t think I deserve to feel like that. I don’t think any single person deserves to feel like that. Who I am as a person isn’t defined by whether or not someone’s brain produces the same happy love chemicals at the same time mine does. I am not my relationship status (or lack thereof). I am simply me. A musician, a loyal friend, an advocate of mental health reform, a proud member of the bisexual community, a lover of flawed fantasy TV and obscure musical comedies, a curious woman on a quest for knowledge who does calculus for fun and reads too much Good Omens fanfiction. Just to name a few things. And although other people’s opinions don’t really matter, I still wish they would see that instead of Poor Area Single Who Needs Help.

I don’t have any answers. I...don’t really know how to deal with this or what I hoped to accomplish by writing this out. But I do know that I haven’t really seen this particular experience described in a way I could relate to, and, well, I’ve found that discussing my feelings through writing helps me to better deal with them. And if I can help anyone also feeling these things to feel less alone, then all the better. I do think we tend to commodify romantic love, and I think sometimes we can lose sight of just how much that can hurt people. Even people actively seeking it.

And there is nothing wrong with seeking it. Just as there is nothing wrong with not having it. My heart is my own and doesn’t rely on someone else’s feelings or proximity to keep beating. That’s not how human anatomy works. And as we reevaluate our ideals and what things like self-love and feminism and happiness truly mean, I hope we can all collectively realize that.