The truer the better

I imagine you in a modest house, somewhere near the coast but not the kind where people go to the beach. The kind where every once in a while the water slams against the jagged rocks of a cliff. There is a table in the kitchen, against a window, large enough to hold your vase of flowers and a few books, a couple of errant mugs of mostly-drunk tea. But not so large that it feels lonely when it’s just you there. Which is probably often. Maybe always. In the sitting room (I hope you have a sitting room), the shelves hold books with your name on the spine. I imagine you living a life that has answered many of the questions I hold today. I imagine you looking around at your life and recognizing yourself in it. I imagine you living a life that is wholly your own. But most of all, I imagine you alone.

In December of 2020, on the eve of my birthday, I sat down and wrote a letter to my future self. In the darkness of that winter, when everything seemed impossible, I needed to imagine some future version of me. But even in my idealized vision of my future life - a successful writer with a house on a coast - the one reality I could not escape was that of being alone. And how could I? More than ever before or since in my life, I was constantly confronted with loneliness, served neat and strong. I was a year and three months into being single after a devastating breakup, and we were about nine months into social distancing. It would have been delusional to imagine anything other than a life alone for my future self.

I didn’t have a target for when I’d read the letter. I wrote it that night because I needed to write it, but I didn’t think about when I’d need to read it. I put it in an envelope, addressed it to myself, tossed it into the box of “important documents” that lives in the back of my closet and soon forgot all about it. I came upon it recently during a closet clear-out (didn’t manage to actually clear anything out).

Reading the letter now, three years later and still single, I was surprised by how ashamed I felt by its honesty. In my hands were three pages of truth I recognize, and my response was to try and quickly hide it away. Maybe now wasn’t the time to read it. Or, maybe it feels shameful to admit some truths about being human because we do so much work to cut away the parts of our selves that feel these things. I think it surprised me because I haven’t seen myself as someone who does that. In fact, usually for me the opposite is true. I usually think I can stand to feel a little less, be a little less expressive of those feelings. But no matter what, and especially when it comes to sharing the inner parts, my motto has always been the truer the better.

So why did I recoil from my own true words? I think there is something specifically shameful about being a straight single woman in her thirties (and older) admitting she is afraid of a life of loneliness. Jesus, even that sentence was impossible to write. I think it feels like you’re admitting something that gives an inch of permission to the horrible people of the internet and other media who want to scare us into settling for what I can only describe as a truly concerning population of single straight men. It feels like a small sin to admit that you do want love. A few nights ago, eating pasta on my couch with a dear friend who is also single and similar to me in views about living alone (intense love for our solitude), I admitted quietly that I do want love. To which he replied an enthusiastic and affirming of course! So do I! Like lifting a veil to reveal the part that we keep hidden away, as single people of a certain age.

I think there is a lazy assumption that people who are long-term single have a negative view of love, or that we don’t know how to value companionship above our self-centered interests. I get all sorts of unsolicited advice about how nobody is perfect and other sentiments that suggest that if I still haven’t found the right person, it’s because I have unrealistic expectations or I refuse to compromise. I don’t know if that’s true. But I do know for certain that in the reality of dating right now, the thing I often feel like I’m being asked to compromise is my dignity. And I will not give that up for anything.

At the end of our dinner, my friend and I made a simple promise to each other: if when we’re old you are still alone, and you need me to hold your hand through something, I will be there. Wherever you are.

So, I guess 2020 Lidiya was mistaken about imagining me always alone and therefore unloved. Maybe I will still be loved, and loving well into old age and end of life. Perhaps not romantic love. Or even familial love. Perhaps it will be just love in the elemental sense. Love as the force of the universe which governs the law of existence. Love like truth. Love like beauty. Love like time. I don’t know for certain. Who does?

Thank you for being here.

—

Something to read

In Arrangements in Blue, poet Amy Key writes about a life lived alone, and everything that comes with it. I recognized so much of myself in it that halfway through the book I was sending desperate, all-caps texts to my other single friends: you have to read this book! It’s one of the few texts on this topic that I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot) that feels honest about the joys and pains of living alone, without falling into yes you’re afflicted with being single now and that actually is very sad but just keep believing and trying and hoping and compromising enough of yourself away and someday you, too, will find love. Which is the subtext I often read into this type of content. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read and I recommended you read it, too. Whether or not you are single.