I’m a Twenty-Something Single Woman— And I Know It’s Not Because of the Pandemic
Last night, I had a dream. I was being prepped for some kind of surgery — don’t know what it was. Stomach surgery, maybe? The nurses set up a minute-by-minute countdown to the surgery while I was being prepped. 856 minutes, 855 minutes, 854 minutes…on and on it went. The doctors about to perform the surgery then made a point to each other that instead of cutting me open, they were going to enter me through an orifice. If they don’t, they said to each other, “Well, do you want her jaw to clamp shut for the rest of her life?” Oddly resigned to this dramatic bit of news, the dream moves on into something else entirely (as dreams are wont to do). I’m Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz in Munchkinland. Now, in the movie, the Yellow Brick Road is in Munchkinland’s town square where it spirals out from nothing into existence. In my dream, the Yellow Brick Road is actually everywhere. I’m looking for something that I’ve been walking on this entire time.
My Freudian readers can go ahead and play with this dream as they like. Personally, I know my subconscious is expressing a lot of things here. I want to resolve many things in my life, and I feel like I’m on this giant countdown — I’m almost thirty, and I’ve been single for what feels like way too long. Yet, everything I really want in life right now won’t be too entirely hard to obtain. If I take this dream and just look at one of the bigger things in life that I’ve been wanting for years — a boyfriend — then I can say easily that in a world of Match.com, Bumble, Facebook groups, forums, meet-ups, and so much else, finding love has never been easier. I’m on a constant Yellow Brick Road.
Well, this is all true in theory. If my dream self undergoing an unusual surgical process is any indication, I kind of want things to just…happen to me. Listen to God. Let the Law of Attraction guide you. Let the Universe guide you. It will happen. Someday, you’ll find the one — be patient. You’ll be right. Don’t force it, or you’ll screw Divine timing up! Just calm down!
And yet, everything I wanted in life was obtained through hard work and dedication. I know my life is not a rom-com. If it was, then I would have totally bumped into my soulmate when I went ice skating a couple of days ago. He would have picked me up, we would have grabbed a coffee, wedding bells would ring…no. That doesn’t happen, and frankly nor would I want it to.
I think that’s just the underlying thing. Do I want a boyfriend? And why? Why now? Really?
I like to use the pandemic as a weak scapegoat for why my love life has been especially crappy for the past few years, but really, I was never really a go-out-and-meet-people kind of person. Any time I take that Myers-Briggs test, I always straddle the line between “I” and “E” — I’m a true ambivert. I like being in a social setting before I’m physically done. In the meantime, I’m content spending days hunkered at home, writing and doing my thing. As I’m told time and again, if you want to meet people, you need to get out and do things. Obviously true, not denying that. A fairy godmother isn’t going to whisk up someone in my bedroom.
But is that really the issue? Just finding someone?
I know what it really all is for me regarding love. I’ve never fallen truly in love with a person in my peer group. I get these celebrity crush infatuations that I have a hard time letting go of, knowing full well that they will never come to fruition because I feel deep down that the fantasies themselves will be better than actually being in a relationship. It’s like Daphne and Niles in Frasier — here is a guy who has a woman always within his grasp, but even when intervening obstacles like Daphne’s engagement or Niles’ marriage with Maris fall away, there’s one big reason as to why Niles really waited six years before being with Daphne (spoiler alert, sorry). He loved the fantasy. Niles never wanted the fantasy to really go away.
It’s why I put a picture of Harry Styles on my vision board with the text, “Someone like him please, thank you Universe.” I’ll never be with Harry Styles, and I really don’t want to believe that I’ll actually be with him. Why then, in the height of my Harry Styles phase during the summer after Fine Line’s release, would my brain keep flooding up with dopamine and oxytocin whenever I saw him? Why do I develop these fantasies with people who are on the other side of the planet, living a life that will very likely not cross paths with mine in any significant way? It feels pathetic, hopeless, and exhausting.
Why can’t I just fall in love with a guy I meet in a workout class?
And that’s the ringer. Not only do I want to find a person, but I want to cull these fantasies that do me no good. That’s easier said than done because while I hate to admit it, fantasies are fantasies for a reason — there’s a part of me that wishes for them to someday be true. In a world that says “go for it, don’t give up on your dreams!”, sometimes you’re afraid of quitting an idea. But if it doesn’t serve you in any way, quit you must. Shed you must. Lose your excess baggage and move forward, doing the scary thing of trying something new.
Here’s what I hope for with love. Why would I care about imagining myself with a cute celebrity when I’m with a flesh-and-blood person who I actually care about, and who actually cares about me? I don’t want cute and interesting, I want something deeper. I want to be with someone who’s imperfect, loving, creative, ambitious, smart, great to converse with, and more importantly — personable. These things take time. Love blooms — it doesn’t smack us like Cupid’s arrow. Well, infatuations certainly do. But not love.
The good news is, I know I’m not alone in this. There are plenty of women (and men) out there who are looking for their someone, but they just feel stuck. Whether it be a string of bad relationships, idealized romantic fantasies, or just a general “I don’t know what to do in life” kind of thing, so many people out there have been looking for love. It’s normal, and it’s understandable. And here’s the frustrating part — while we tell ourselves that we’re open to anything, we’re probably pickier than generations before us when it comes to finding a long-lasting relationship. I don’t want to be another person out there that just swipes right for my person. I want what so many people in my life have — a bond. And that feels hard to come by.
I want to be honest with what I really want in love and how I actually want to approach it. Love is a weird desire to have, to the point where it feels weird to make it a desire at all. Want to be a writer? Write! Want a new job? Update your resume and apply! Want to find a boyfriend? Ugh…play the field? But don’t desperately play the field — you don’t want to hook up. Keep your standards in mind. Oh, and you don’t want to close yourself off to opportunities, because this is the kind of thing that just happens. And one more thing: you’re not going to have feelings for everyone who’s single. In fact, your brain is just going to start falling in love with people. Very, very few people. Get ready.
In the meantime, I sometimes feel like I’m on a nonstop merry-go-round. I mentioned earlier that I went ice skating a couple of days ago. The last time I went skating was…years ago. I don’t even remember. So the reason I went was mainly because, while watching the Beijing Olympics this past February, a new person entered my mind and has been latched on since. Ice skating helped me connect with this fantasy. If I don’t stay grounded in reality…well, here we go again.
It sucks. However, it’s assuring that for millennia, people have found their person. That’s one thing that I hope keeps single people like me going. It’s okay if there are things that I want other than finding love — it’s not my sole goal in life. And, it’s okay if it hurts a little. Yet we’ll all be fine, we’ll all find our person if we’re open enough to it, and we’ll all grow enough in due time to finally be with someone. We’re ready when we’re ready — if we ever care to be ready or not.
