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