Harsh Truths In The Life Of A Single, 30-something Girl
Before I begin, I want to set something straight – I am a late bloomer. Everything in my life has taken its sweet time to arrive. Not surprisingly, life lessons that today’s generation is learning in their early 20s have kicked in for me as late as my mid-30s.
It took me a bit of time to put these into words, and confront myself. But now that I have written them all down, I feel a strange sense of relief. I know for a fact there will be many, many women who will identify with this story and the idea is that once you acknowledge these fears or truths, life becomes easier.
I am looking for love and I have been in constant denial. I thought if I admitted this, I would drive people away. That I would be the ‘uncool’ one. The fact is that being in denial and refusing to put it all out there is what has been driving people away anyway. I might as well be honest then. Not to anyone else, but to myself. The ones who don’t run away will be the ones who are not be intimidated by this honesty.
I am increasingly realising I may have commitment phobia, not just in relationships. In anything that needs me to commit my time and efforts. This is not a pleasant realisation, I have to say. But I am glad I am aware of it now.
While the movie Friends with Benefits seemed cool and the concept, cooler, I figure I am not cool about it. I have pretended to be all okay and nonchalant about it but it came back to bite me in the ass. That invisible line between being casual and getting involved becomes blurry after a couple of nights, if you are a normal emotional fool like me.
Over and over, one after another, I have fallen for the wrong men. The pattern has become so obvious that even a child should be able to tell me that so and so guy is not for me. But do I ever listen? No. I love the chase, I dig the ‘waiting for calls and messages to be returned’ routine. Sometimes I feel I am a masochist. I love inflicting this pain on my little heart. I am learning but I am not applying those learnings.
I have often questioned myself for failed or ‘almost there’ kind of relationships. I have only always blamed myself, held pity parties after every heartbreak. For what? Because I am emotional and get attached to people easily? Because I feel deeply? Because between the two of us, only I get emotional? Yes. That has been the reason. I have accused myself of being over-emotional. As if the world wasn’t doing enough, I have bashed myself up way too much.
Having married and engaged friends around me and consoling me after every heartbreak can be comforting and I am thankful to all of them for being around. But there are times they don’t understand what I am going through. ‘Move on’, ‘he was not right for you’, ‘you are way too independent to be in a relationship’, ‘you are not the marrying kinds’, ‘get over him already’ are just some of the things I hear. I know they mean well, but they don’t know what it means to be perennially single. That sometimes I just want my emotions to be taken seriously.
As I grow older, I am falling out with a lot of people I used to call friends. The number is increasing steadily. Am I proud of it? No. But I can’t be with people who make me unhappy, who pull me down, all in the name of friendship.
I have created my own motto to live by: Life is too short
to work bad jobs and be with bad people.
The list of jobs I quit is long, but I don’t regret even one of them. People find inconsistency and indecisiveness in my career graph, but they’re not going to pay my bills, are they? I know I can’t stick with a job when it is making me cry every day. That’s my truth.
Well, if you identified with any of these points, just know that you are not alone now. And facing the problem is one step closer to solving it. Right?
