I learned a lot about love this year.
99% of what I learned was happy and healthy. The kind of things you yearn to be shown— up close and personal. The uplifting and fulfilling kind.
The other 1% is something I’ve debated writing about. Part of me wants to use my voice and my little platform here to draw attention to the ugly side of what it means to be a woman dating in the vicious so-called “hook up culture”. And the other part of me doesn’t want to give a single second of airtime to the demoralizing men who have not one clue how to respectfully regard another human being, let alone woman.
I digress.
I’ll be the first to state I love being in a relationship. I would pick to be monogamous over casually dating any day of the week.
But sometimes love isn’t in your hand. At times, love isn’t even in the deck.
Thats when it’s just me, myself, and I… and the girls I would take bullets for.
~
For many years, all I wanted was to be in a happy relationship. I wanted someone to go to dinner with, to spend my weekends with, to call at the end of the work day, to go on morning walks with, to buy spontaneous gifts for, to laugh with, and to love.
To be clear, when I say “wanted”, I mean every fiber of my being was asking for it. I was hyper-fixated on looking for a relationship. I would think about it all the time. I just really, really wanted to love and be loved.
Which is something a lot of my friends wanted, too. We’d spend a large, large chunk of our time talking about it, dreaming about it, and dissecting why it wasn’t happening.
It’s safe to say, it’s pretty much all we wanted. We’d forego a lot of other luxuries just to have a guy we loved by our side.
After this year, I realized how much joy a happy relationship can bring you. How healing and healthy it can be. How much love can be shared and how much comfort it can bring.
But something I didn’t expect to learn after my relationship ended this year was the immense amount of peace I received from being single again… and not in the, “Oh, thank God. Now I can go hog wild and not be tied down,” kinda way.
In the, “I am no longer racing toward a relationship. I am so okay with just being with me,” kinda way.
Here’s the thing. Once you’re locked in, you’re locked in. Once you find your person, you’re on a whole new ride, and there will never be another track you ride solo.
Which is amazing, right? It’s phenomenal. You get to admire cool views and decide which stops you want to get off at, all with someone who wants to do it with you.
But we rush the time we have with ourselves to get to that train. We crave the thrill of buying a one-way ticket and forget how freeing it can be to hop tracks at any given time.
I loved being in a relationship this year, but there is nothing that can replace the feeling of a wine night with friends, watching a movie you’ve been dying to see with your roommate, making celebratory plans with your group of girls, planning a trip with your best friend, and just living your god damn life without the pressure of finding a guy.
I cannot tell you how many minutes of my life I’ve wasted on wanting to find love. Months and months worth of mental energy were devoted solely to that.
And I get it from a psychological perspective. It’s natural to want what you don’t have.
Except, being single this time around has given me a whole new perspective on living my life for me.
Not for me… with the hope of someone else joining.
Not for me… while secretly praying it’d be “we”.
Not for me… wondering when I’d find him.
Just for me. Period.
~
It’s such a hard thing to be mindful of while you’re in it. When you want something so bad (whatever it may be), you often obsess over controlling every aspect of it, and it’s really tough to escape that mindset.
But not only does that repel the very thing you want, it also detracts from what your reality is.
Oftentimes your reality is something you have to learn to let go of once you find your person. That doesn’t mean you drop all of your friends and run off with your lover, but it does mean restructuring your time to accommodate for someone you deeply care for. Which, inevitably, requires releasing a bit of your independence and allotting less time for the friends you once watched movies you were dying to see with.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: don’t rush the time you have with your friends or with yourself. Don’t take the belly laughs and car rides and “I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried” nights for granted.
Your person will find you when the timing is right, and when you put your trust in that, you will release the need to speed up your life. Doing so means you can take the slow road— the scenic route— to wherever you’re going, and find pockets of love in everything you do, all the people you meet, and the journey along the way.
With that, I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote a year or so ago that still resonates today.
I am at the age where
Marriage is not absurd
Children are not out of the question
Home-owning is very common
But last Friday night I thought of all the weekends I have left to just me
To dance until the wee hours of the night
Slip some guy my number at the bar
Not have to worry about who’s waiting up for me at home
And for a split second
I envisioned myself with a husband and kids in a house I owned
Looking back at me right now
Telling her
To just go
To do it
To be as selfish as I possibly can be
Because one day it won’t be just me
It will be much more than that
It will be the most rewarding love
Fulfilling beyond belief
But it will never just be me again
So cherish this part
Embrace this version
Give her everything she wants
Life will be beautiful in the future
There’s no need to worry
But don’t skim this chapter just to rush to the end
The end will be there
This chapter is for you, only
Go give me something to be proud of
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