Love — to some people, it makes us gush with happiness, or gush with disgust, or just not gush at all. All three of those are OK, but we tend to have extreme views on relationships and love lives. It's either we are heartbroken or madly in love. We are desired or desperate to be desired. Nobody ever writes about a character who just "isn't interested" or no main character in your favorite TV show just "isn't feeling it lately". Whatever you feel, it is perfectly okay. We all have the right to be who we want to be, but nobody ever discusses why they don't want a relationship, and that they're content with it.
Ever since I was younger, I expected myself to have the same goals my parents and the rest of my friends did. I was to find a guy that I loved and who loved me back, get married, have kids and the rest is history from there. Ever since I was younger, I was expected to have a high school sweetheart or my high school experience wouldn't be complete. But I'm way too young to have any idea about what love is or who I want to love or what love means to me.
What love means to me right now: is having dinner ready on a long day, or seeing my dog rush to me with love. Love isn't my significant other holding me or taking me out to dinner on a Friday night. I'm not looking for a relationship anytime soon, and that's OK for me.
I have other goals than a boyfriend or girlfriend. Working out and maintaining a healthy body, focusing on my academics and making wise decisions in an important transition in my life, having positive relationships with friends and family. I'm not saying that being in a dedicated relationship is wrong, it just isn't for me.
Ten years from now, I don't see myself with the "love of my life." I see myself kicking ass in my career and being an independent hard worker. I see myself taking my younger siblings on vacations half-way across the world. I see myself traveling new places, eating new foods and talking in different languages to people.
Sure, this doesn't mean I get extra bitter when I see the same girl from high school post her fiftieth #MCM or some couple getting their PDA on in public. Sometimes, we just have to recognize what is best for ourselves and go with it. Being in a relationship is not for me right now, I have plenty of work to do on myself before I let somebody in that close.
No, it's not that I'm afraid of being hurt. I'm not afraid of commitment. I'm not afraid of opening my heart up to someone right now. I'm not afraid or threatened by the future, I'm beyond excited for it. Everybody uses the phrase "one day you'll find the right person" or "there is a right person out there for you," when 50 percent of the American population is single, or 124.6 million people. How can you say that under those statistics? I'm not saying that we're all going to die alone, but everyone doesn't have their happy ending. That's not pessimism, that is just life.
So in 10 years, when you're baking cookies with your children, I'll be in Taiwan studying vaccinations. When you and your spouse are going out on a date, I'll be in my bedroom studying to better my studies. Currently, I would rather spend my time binge watching Sons of Anarchy than hanging out with my boyfriend.
We all, at the end of the day, have to do what is best for ourselves, and that right now is being single. So please, at the next family holiday, please refrain from asking about why I don't have a boyfriend. Right now, I'm just doing me.