SLW

Today was an oddly perfect day. Did you SEE outside today? It was like textbook "perfect weather" day in my book. Wispy clouds backed by a bright blue sky and a gentle breeze. It was something out of a novel... young adult fiction to be exact because that is what I'm currently obsessed with reading. Don't judge too hard - also blame John Green.

It turned out to be a Single Lady Wednesday where I actually got to hang out with a SINGLE LADY on a WEDNESDAY. Whaaaaaat?! My friend Maggie came down to visit for the day and (because I'm weird) I was very nervous/excited. There might have been pizza involved, orangey-pink colored drinks and... cookies and ice cream involved. I mean if we started braiding each other's hair and broke out the nail polish it would be all over.

It was a much needed good Wednesday.

SLW: a good read

I found writer, Cody Gohl, on Thought Catalog and he may be the only writer I don't hate on that website now. Well he's single... and wrote a great piece about being single that encouraged me a lot, especially since my outlook on life has been EXTRA bleak lately. We're not gonna get into that, though I do have a few drafts of blog posts that are pretty much just sobbing, written out.

Read on.

The Single Person's Manifesto

I am single. I am single and happy. Even more than happy, I am single and happy and enthusiastic and excited about each day. And if I am not any of these things, it is not because I long for a romantic or sexual partner, or because I wish to shed this singleness from my skin. 

To be quite honest, I like my singleness. It’s freeing. It’s wild dancing and reading late into the night and learning the types of small confidences no one ever teaches you: eating alone at a café, going to see a movie by yourself, sinking peacefully into silence. It empowers me: to rediscover old quirks past flames told me were annoying, to treat my mind and my body like the revelations they are. For the first time in my life, I’m falling in love with myself and it’s exhilarating. When I write, it is for me. When I comb my hair or buy new clothes or press flowers for bookmarks, it is for me and for me alone. Out of love for myself, out of a deep celebration of who I am. 

Because it has always been easier for me to fall in love with others than it has been for me to fall in love with myself. I’ve been a fool for poetry and promises of any fractured nature. I believed my eyes and laugh were beautiful because someone who wanted to kiss me told me that they were. I could dream any sorry person into a fantasy simply by believing that it was my duty as a lover or a soulmate to push them along on their journey to becoming better and more loving people. 

But I am sick of convenience. The handsome man at the bar who buys me a drink does not deserve any part of me simply for his being handsome or for me being drunk or for him having bought my attention with a strong glass of gin because we are the only two mildly attractive people in the joint. I’m tired of justifying my way into situations that leave me tangled and broken come dawn. 

I am single because it is important for me to be single so that I might learn how to unearth joy from nothing more than an empty room and my own being. If I cannot find happiness or fulfillment within myself, there is no amount of sex or free dinner or flower bouquets that can do it for me.

I am single because I refuse to put my emotional stability into the hands of another person because my heart is not a light switch someone else gets to turn on or off based on whether or not they think I look like someone they’d want to sleep with.

I belong to no one and no one belongs to me and this is exactly what I need right now. So no, please don’t set me up with your cute and irresistible friend. Do not tell me that things will be better once I find someone, that all I need is a man in my life to turn things around. I am joyously and wonderfully and soaringly fine all on my own.

I am single and wouldn’t have it any other way.

- Cody Gohl - find him on tumblr - you'll read all night guaranteed

SLW: someone mentioned you on the internet...

And I got sweaty. Even my hands started to sweat. I twitched, I sniffed, I scratched my neck. Then I scratched my head. My eyes shift left to right and right to left as I scrolled, possessed, reading the mention over and over - clicking away, coming back like a shameful dog and reading it again.

Then I got mad. I got incensed. I got outraged. I cursed your name. I texted my friend. She sided with me.

My heart beat fast like I just ran somewhere. My breath came in thin rasps. My vision wouldn't focus.

I'm perfect without you I just can't stand anything WITH you.

Am I over you? Is the question I skirt around as I drum up every instance of your stupidity. Your immaturity. Your inability to not be a self centered person.

Am I over you? looms on the edge of my periphery. When I look straight at it, it disappears, but it's always pressing, creeping closer, looming larger.

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I wrote this forever ago, when this actually happened. I get weirded out sharing half thoughts... quick blurbs of thought cuz they're not finished and polished and don't have a resolved ending that sounds a bit like 'it'll all work out in the end' or '...and then I saw a cloud shaped like a heart and now things are better.' I can't say this is 'raw' writing it's just... unfinished. That's cool right?

I plan on... grossly over eating tomorrow. *nods* yep. Happy 4th to you!