The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

IT’S MY JOB I was recently watching The Big Sick, in which a character says, ‘Do you ever want to just get into a relationship so that you can...relax’. Yes. That hits the nail square on the head. Being single can be exhausting, because of that constant feeling of treading water.

panic’, if that gives you some headspace, some breathing room, then do that.

“Let’s say you do meet the person within the time frame you want,”’ Hilda says. ‘“Imagine that you have two years before meeting them. How can you look at this time, this two years, as a golden opportunity. How can you appreciate this time?”’.

‘Oh, the dream. The goddammed man + baby dream. Written by the High Commission on Heterosexual Love and Sexual Reproduction and practised by couples across the land, the dream’s a bitch if you’re a maternally inclined straight female and not living it by the age of thirty-seven.’ – CHERYL STRAYED, TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS

Basically, we fill in the blanks in our knowledge with traits we want them to have. So, we imagine them being super-kind, even though we have no first-hand experience of that.

‘Lonely’ is a state of mind, while ‘alone’ is merely circumstantial.

‘self-pity baths’.

‘If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.’ – THOMAS EDISON

I read myself sober, and I read myself happily single. When you learn about something, and learn new ways of thinking about it, you are literally changing your brain and laying down new neural pathways, just as you do when you learn a new language. In the next few chapters, I’m going to share everything useful I learned in my year’s sabbatical.