I am single. I have been my whole life. Of course, I’ve gone on dates here and there, and I’ve fallen head over heels for many people, but never a real relationship.
Is this hard, you ask? Being a single female in a society that is constantly asking, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
No seriously, I get remarks similar to this all the time, and I’m sure most single females reading this can relate. It’s the first thing my dentist thinks to say whenever I go in for a check-up and the lingering question from relatives I haven’t seen in a while.
I’ve been close to a relationship many times. I’ve gotten my hopes up as high as they could go, thinking that soon I’d finally have a hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on.
But none of these have ever lasted very long. People leave me. I leave people. And since I’ve been involved in the theater since I was a little girl, “showmances” are a common trend in my life as well.
I’ve had my heart broken a number of times. I fall too quickly for people and love them too hard. But that’s not to say I haven’t done my own share of heart breaking.
It just seems that whenever I end up finding someone, things always go wrong. One of us doesn’t feel the way the other does. We are never on the same page at the same time. You could say that relationships aren’t my forte. But honestly, being single hasn’t ever bothered me too much.
Growing up, I had big dreams, but none of them included walking down an aisle to meet the love of my life or a beautiful wedding ring. I dreamed of singing on a Broadway stage or recording my newest album out in LA.
Although my dreams have become a little more realistic, I still think of them way more often than I think of having a significant other.
I want to move to the city. I want to travel and see Paris, Hawaii, Alaska, and Rome. I want to perform. I want to help a lot of people and adopt a lot of dogs.
But lately, despite all of this, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about relationships and why I’m not in one. I am a nice person. I am funny sometimes. I am decent looking, I guess. I am a smart and independent person and am working hard to make something of myself.
I look around at the people surrounding me and think,
“Why them?”
“Why not me?”
I often wonder if there is something wrong with me. I wonder why people have totally cut me off when I felt like things were going so well, or why I couldn’t have just stuck it out a little longer with some people to see where things went.
I have days where I am content by myself, but I also have days where I scroll through Instagram, see happy couples and burst into tears because I want what they have.
On those bad days, there a couple of things I tell myself.
One of them is, “Katie, you’re being ridiculous, please pull yourself together.”
The other one is more significant, and it goes a little something like this.
“Katie, you are fine. You might be lonely right now, but you are never alone. It is not your fault that people have left you, or that you just didn’t have feelings for that person. Don’t let this get in the way of your dreams.”
And I never do. I keep pushing on because I want to make my dreams come true more than I want any person. I want to do something to make my ten-year-old self proud. And that means way more to me than being in a relationship.
The way I see it is, the right person will show up one day. And I hope I'm ready when they arrive.