Marriage, babies, lovey-dovey Facebook posts, and articles proclaiming the advantages of finding love young are among some of the most terrifying and simultaneously curiosity-inducing things on this earth. For most people, these are things to work towards, eventual goals they want to reach with that special someone that they eventually want to spend the rest of their life with. However, for some people, these fates just seem… unappealing.
I am one of those people. One of those annoyingly independent types. The “I don’t need no man (woman or child) to make me happy” type. You know the one. The girl you and your friends are pretty sure is going to grow old with her pets and her career, never knowing the sense of fulfillment given by a child or a loving partner because she’s just too darned concerned with herself and her own success.
Except social media and internships and majors and special programs and articles written on The Odyssey don’t ever show you what those people feel at night when they come home to an empty phone, or when someone asks them when the last time they went on a date was and their answer is seriously and accurately “never.” They never show you how each time they are forced to face their loneliness a deep and dark fear washes over them, forcing them to hide their tears behind a fake smile as they, once again, are forced to come to terms with the fact that no matter how “pretty” other people tell them they are, how successful they become, or how many people laugh at their jokes, that they still haven’t been good enough for someone to pick them above the others in the crowd. Most likely, that fiercely independent person is so fearsome because if they weren’t, they would drown in the desolation that threatens to swallow them at every innocent question in the Target check-out line.
There is a difference between being newly single, basking in the glow of freedom, and the person who has never known what it means to be loved and held by another. There is a difference between branching out on your own for the first time in a long time and wondering what it would be like to have someone you can relate to on the deepest of levels. There is a difference between knowing and deciding otherwise, and never having experienced at all. Those who have never experienced this kind of love or even a type of mediocre affection (if they are anything like myself) just want to know what it’s like. Just once. We are comfortable in our independence because it’s all we’ve ever known, not because it was the life we chose for ourselves.
So, the next time you’re talking about that guy who's “forever alone,” or that girl who you think is going to grow up to be a “future cat lady of America,” try to remember that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t happy being single. Try to remember that you poking fun at them may bring out their worst fears, and always remember how lucky you are that you were able to (if you were able to) chose to be single or in a relationship.
