A Word on Singleness

A WORD ON SINGLENESS

A friend asked me the other day, “Luke, how have you managed to be single for nineteen years?” At first, I thought he meant this as a compliment, an “It’s surprising more people haven’t found you attractive” kind of thing. But then he clarified, “What I mean is how have you tolerated being alone for this long?” This was a much more profound question and my friend was asking it in earnest. This question would also require some thought because no one had asked me it before.

The first thing I would tell my friend is that I don’t “tolerate” being alone because it isn’t annoying. I love my own company. Really, I do. I’m infamous among my friends for going out to eat by myself. “That’s so sad!” they all say. Is it, really? I don’t think so. After all, it’s not like I’m dragging myself into wine bars at 1 AM to marinate in regret. I treat myself to beignets! Or to brunch on the lake! And while I’m there, I put away my phone and people-watch and soak in the breeze and think. It’s wonderfully relaxing. Another time I enjoy being alone is when I’m driving. I’ve created a playlist on Spotify of all my favorite songs and when I’m commuting to school for instance, I’ll crank up my Honda’s brave little radio as high as it will go and roll the windows down and play air drums. Yesterday actually, I was at a stoplight really getting into “Don’t Stop Believin’” when I looked over and spotted the guy next to me watching and laughing. He was happy I caught him and when the light turned green, we drove the next half-mile next to one another in adjacent lanes singing together. So one reason I can “tolerate” being alone is that I don’t outsource my joy from other people. I don’t leech warmth from a boyfriend or girlfriend; I generate it from the inside. And not because I’m “that great”, but because I’ve never had any other option.

The bigger reason I don’t mind being single is because in many ways I’m not. Don’t let this point throw you — I am single, make no mistake. (I don’t keep a secret lover stuffed in my closet.) But in many ways, I don’t consider myself to be.

Often, the price of being swept up in a relationship is that, to a degree at least, people become slightly more hesitant to confide their secrets to you. I know this because I’ve had friends who I felt a little unsafe sharing private information with once they started dating someone. Not that they would go blabber-mouth all my secrets to their significant other, it’s just knowing that they could and still technically be in the right that makes me and other secret-tellers nervous. (Sorry, people with boyfriends and girlfriends, you just lose out on this one.)

When you are single, though! Ah, when you are single, you are a free-floating social entity with no obligations to tell anyone anything for any reason if you don’t want to, which makes you a perfect receptacle for everyone’s nitty-gritty and sometimes profoundly painful stories. Over time, you become enlightened to facts about people that are shocking and transform the way you see them. You are permitted entrance into their longings and fears and dreams and hatreds, and out of this, a new level of intimacy is born, one that you would never have imagined sharing with the person sitting across from you. I’ve had people open up to me about attempted suicides, come out as gay in my living room before they have told anyone else, weep angry tears in my passenger seat because they hate their parents. The list is almost inexhaustible. Emotionally then, I am intimate with many people from far and wide, sometimes even more so than they are with their own significant other. Another way I “date” my friends is by actually taking them on dates. Romantic dinners, stargazing in our pajamas, Disney nights cuddled up on the couch. These dates share every resemblance with a “real” date except that they don’t end in sex or hooking up or whatever (and why have we come to believe that “real” dates have to end that way, anyway??). Surely, I couldn’t do these things if I weren’t single.

So I’m emotionally sewn to my friends. I take them on dates. I would block a bullet for them and they would for me. Where here are the qualifications for “dating” not fulfilled other than in the fact that we don’t “do stuff”? When I think of it this way, I’m reminded that I’m not single at all. In fact, I’m quite taken and by dozens of people all at once.

I am not in a rush to find “the one”. I’m not even in a rush to find “the maybe” or “the we kind of like each other.” I’m more than happy in my own two shoes, alone, because I’m not lonely here. I’ve been allowed to know people’s stories and to make known my story to them. I still get to dress up and make dinner reservations in the Quarter and treat my friends to romantic meals. I still get to hold someone I love in my arms, even if that someone changes frequently. I have boyfriends and girlfriends all over the place.

I understand that this won’t make sense to everyone; I don’t expect it to. (Fun fact: I’m writing this on my phone while I walk down the lakefront and I just passed two girls who asked me if I was out here alone. I said yes and they said, “Aw, that’s sad.” I wished them a Happy Fourth and kept walking.) I understand that the fact that I sometimes make banana pancakes for myself in the morning while listening to “Banana Pancakes” (and laugh at the pun) will make some people pity me. I’m here to tell them: don’t. I possess joy in amounts that should not be humanly sustainable. I laugh at my own jokes — hard — because I am so funny. I look in the mirror every morning and think, “Damn.”

I love my life. My single as single could be life.

To those people, I say: don’t waste your time pitying me. Instead, do me a favor and invest that energy into befriending yourself. It’s worth it. Believe me, I would know.