Embrace Your Being

Photo Credit to Owner. Model and Photographer Unknown. All rights reserved

When I came back, a couple of people trying to hook me up with like minded folks had suggested this one girlfriend from high school, who was surprisingly still single. Yes, in the majority of all my classmates, from high school to college, there are only a handful of them that are still single, and this girl and I are actually it within a 10 mile radius. So they gave me her number and I tried to reach out to her single sista to single sista to see what trouble we could get into, so to speak. But sadly, she was not having it. She would make plans and not fulfill them and mumble some excuse about working late, etc. Or she would say she would call back to "gossip" aka girly chat and of course, she wouldn't. Even on Sunday, so I know it had nothing to do with work. With time, I stopped calling and did my own solo thing as y'all have known me to do.

So when I mentioned it to one of the girlfriends who had furnished me with her number in the first place, I said, "Home girl is not having it. She's not returning my calls. She's just not in the mood."

My girlfriend said, "Do you think everyone is fully embracing the 'I'm single and I'm loving it status like you.' Maybe she's single and she is not loving it. She just wants to stay home and sulk, or put her face in her work and not be 'single and proud' with her single status.

Maybe she has a point. I just never thought someone would exist at my age, who is still single and hasn't realized, this is no time to cry over spilled milk. So we're single and we're 30, 35 and now 40. So what are we going to do? Sulk, really? It is not a sin to be single. It is also not a burden to be single. It is just a status. A status I am hoping one day will have more rights just like the gays do now. But for now, it's a status that is not permanent. It's a burden to be unemployed or sick. But to be single. I just don't see it as a status I have to whine about. It is what it is. And this is how it is. I don't have to worry about another person just me. I don't have to cook for another person, or even cook at all. It's just me. I don't have to ask any other person if I can go on vacation to Milan or Tuscany, just me (and my bank account). My mum always used to say whenever I would whine about having to wash up after working late, "You're single, you don't have to clean up if you don't want to. You leave dishes in the sink, so you leave them on the sink. No one is there to complain about them." And slowly, I realized that was true.

There are advantages to it. There are also disadvantages to it too. But I don't want to sit and whine about it as if it's an extra burden on my shoulder. It is a state of being. You could be in a multiple unworthy unsatisfactory abusive relationships, but you're not. You're in the most rewarding one yet - the one with yourself and until you can fight with yourself (which I haven't seen happen yet) this is the most peaceful sublime one yet. Forgive me if I don't want to whine about it...but I choose to embrace it. I will embrace it until that status changes.

I don't know what's up with my one single girlfriend. I haven't asked her. But I have a feeling by the time she hears how much fun my single self is having in this town, she'll come around.