6.26 All the Single People

Be nice to the single people in your life. We're people just like you. We might lead very different lives, but we're still here. We might be in the background, doing things that you hooked up people don't have to do. For example, when arriving home, we unlock the door to an empty place, where a lonely moment grips us as we stand in the darkness for a minute. It's only a minute or two at the most, then we get on with things. Sometimes we set in a restaurant alone. I have a particular one in Chinatown where the servers all know my order, they ask no questions, pose no judgments, bring my food fast and always smile at me on the way out. I used to go to a movie every week by myself. My favourite time was when the lights went down because in the dark, we're all the same. I'm not a big dancer, but sometimes when at a music show, even if I did feel like it, I refrain from dancing. Single people don't dance when attending a show on their own. I sit alone in coffee shops working, but this is more common and acceptable to society's rules.

Coupled people, you must understand that if I didn't do things on my own, I wouldn't do half the stuff I did.

There's the odd time when I've had some great experience or traveled somewhere interesting, turned to the person next to me and realized that no one was there. Sometimes I've gone to bed, dreamed about a life with another person, not someone I know, just a vague person, like a presence. And I'll wake up to find myself alone stretched out across my bed spread eagled. You see coupled people, the one thing about sleeping on your own is that sometimes I like to curl up into a ball on one side of the bed. Sometimes I like to lay diagonally across the mattress on my stomach. Sometimes I'm on my back. It is one - maybe one of the only - advantages to being on your own. But you still have to wake up alone, wake up with no one beside you. Sit on the edge of the bed, look out your window, want to say good morning to someone, and sometimes even whisper it to yourself.

Single people have to do things like online dating, meet ups and the dreaded 'mixer'. We have to slog through many online dating profiles that all bleed into one another, turn into a giant blob of a person who likes to travel but hasn't gone anywhere, is creative but doesn't explain how, is happy with their work but not really, wants a guy with a good sense of humour but not really, wants an intelligent guy but not really. My plan at the moment is I will meet someone at the various events I go to, the rationale being that we are both their due to our mutual interests, and everything will be easier. This is what we call in the single person world, meeting someone In Real Life (IRL).

This is not designed to garner sympathy for us single people, but just to establish some 'walk a mile in their shoes' kind of thing.

We are in the background, in the shadows. The next time you see a single person sitting alone at a restaurant, think about how lucky you are to be sitting across from someone. Although this might be out of choice, we still need the support of our coupled friends, we need to actually feel a part of society, feel like we belong in some way. Sometimes we can be detached, aloof, look like we don't fit in. This might be the case sometimes, but also, sometimes we just don't know how to fit in. Look around at the world, it's a world designed for couples. Single people have no place in it, except in the shadows.