There are two types of people in this world: Single, and taken. There's no middle ground. Consequently, there are subcategories to each of these:
Those who absolutely love Valentine's Day...
and those who positively despise it with every ounce of their being.
When February 14th rolls around, it seems like the singles become more single, and the takens become more taken. Single folks are yelling from the rooftop their single-ness, either in agonized rage and/ or sadness, or with fierce, proud independence. Somehow, this year, I've found myself caught in the dreaded middle ground.
You see, I may have lied when I said there's no middle ground. There definitely is, my friends- and I'm standing in it. You see, I'm what they call "single-ish"- an individual who identifies as single but is also playing her flirt cards wisely with a handsome beau who may just turn out to be the legendary "one." And as Valentine's Day rolls around, I'm being lured into the urge to tap into my "I freaking love Valentine's Day" and fiercely declare my liking of him, thus asking him to mount my white steed and ride off with me into the sunset as my boyfriend.
And yet, I'm single-ish. Wouldn't that kind of ruin the point of the 'ish' ending? And are these feelings just correlating with the fact that The Day of Love is nearing, or are the authentic and genuine and merely being sped up by the approach of Cupid's arrow?
What my head wants and what my heart wants are two very different things. My heart wants to keep the slow pace we've established. I want to enjoy the slowness- building on a firm foundation of friendship before we adventure off into the unknown idea and parameters of a committed relationship. And yet my head seems to get in the way. My head starts pestering me to move quickly, to look forward at what you could have instead of what you already have. This pestering turns into mocking, and then transforms into yelling. And soon I've spun through all the options of what this relationship could turn into instead of simply focusing on what it is- a budding friendship. Do I want it to turn into something more? Absolutely. But I'm not willing to ruin what we have with preemptive motives of what could be.
And that, right there, is what I think the difference between single and single-ish is: the ability to hang on to your heart and not jump into something just because you're single. There's a time to play the cards and a time to watch the cards fall- and this Valentine's Day, I'm choosing to watch.
