September Surrender: Day Eighteen
There was a bad habit I picked up in all my years of being single: Walking around the city to contemptuously stare at any couple I’d see. It was maddening for a while there. I so badly wanted that for myself that it would be a wonder anyone else actually had it. It wasn’t even a case of them having it before me, I just couldn’t wrap my head around others even finding one another in such a messed up world. It would make me angry, not at the couples themselves, but my own lack of being one. It would take nasty turns, like snarling at people, or thinking in my head every time I’d see a pregnant lady, “Who would f*ck you?!” It wasn’t a good look for me. And now I keep trying to remember what it was like when I didn’t come as a package deal.
When I walk down the street, there’s no signal to me about an attractive man coming my way. All I see are people coming down the pike one after another. There’s no internal alarm saying “Which one of them is my future love?” It doesn’t work like that. It never did, actually, considering how often people are looking down at their phones or have AirBuds in and have shut off the world. Now the thoughts have shifted to wondering if people are as happy as I am. There’s no more wondering why people are together, just the hope they’ve found the right person they went Instagram-official with.
But there are other thoughts still there. I’m trying to remember what it was like being a single girl in Manhattan. The unknowing, the independence, the floating off into space like a little electron. I want to remember and I simply cannot. Because at present time, I don’t need to. I’ve been tied to someone through the ethereal bonds and there’s no coming unglued again. If I one day finish my story about a “single girl” in the dystopian future, I’ll have to refer to my notes from the past seven years when I was that person. Because I’ve finally graduated to the next rank that makes the most sense for me, and no matter how I try, there’s truly no going back.
And that’s a good thing. Because I like where I’m at right now. I wish I could have felt this way when it was just me too, but I suppose you can’t know unless you unwittingly step onto that next level. Maybe I don’t need to relive who I was and just continue to be who I’ve always been. I need not feel bad for finding my forever person, because not everyone does that nor wants to do it. So here’s where I’ll be, still strutting down the street, solo during the week, until I find the next scene that plays out as a duo. I’m stuck in this status. It’s a good thing.