rackers co

There are always a myriad of reasons for something to be the way it is. The reason someone has been single for a long time, or the reason behind a breakup, the reason behind someone’s dating choices, and the reason for someone’s introvertedness, if it’s not already ingrained in their personality.

One of the single-most human (and annoying) things, is that while people understand the complexities of their own lives, their own situations and their own feelings; they tend to forget that the humans around them are just as complex. Just as confused. Just as fucked up as they are.

“So, let me ask you… Why are you single?”

I remember being 21 and getting asked that question, and I’d bashfully smile and say, “oh, I don’t know, I guess timing, and I just haven’t met the right person yet…”

Being 25 and utterly sick of the stigma that comes with being the “perpetually single friend,” I’m tired of it. I’m tired of that question as a whole. I am tired of people still putting so much weight on romanticism and relationships and how you aren’t someone unless you have someone by your side.

So, let me ask you… Why are you single?

This time, I stared at him, in what I could only assume is my best resting bitch face (which probably isn’t very good because I have too much of a cherubby resting smiley face), and took a sip of my red wine.

“What are you wanting me to answer? That I’m entirely independent and haven’t wanted to settle down? That I had my heart broken recently? Because apparently it’s never enough to just say… I just am.”

He looked back at me with an almost-blank stare. And then he laughed, taking a sip of his own wine. “But surely there’s a reason?”

So I threw the question back at him. He happily obliged in this answer; cue the explanation of his reasoning: he broke up with his girlfriend of a few years, he didn’t feel the same way anymore, yada yada. And as he was talking, I couldn’t help wondering if he just wanted to justify his own singledom. If he felt like he should ask my reasons simply so he could tell me his.

Do we feel like we have to justify everything about ourselves, in hopes for the person we’re justifying to understand us better? To make us seem more human, because we don’t want people jumping to conclusions about us? To try and cover just a smidge of that complexity that we all share, so they don’t seem like a boring and shallow person. To act as if it was all cut and dry: that they chose to be single, so they are. As if it is as simple as that, to make them seem less complicated, thus more desirable.

There will always be a myriad of reasons for something; that is the beauty of the human experience. You will never fully understand the reasoning behind a situation unless you are the sole person in it (even then, you are hard pressed to understand even your own logic), and we need to stop putting so goddamn much on romanticism, on relationships, and on singledom. Embrace the shit out of your life and where you are. Stop putting pressure on why people are where they are, expecting a reason behind every little thing, and wanting the reason to appease you. Don’t forget that every single human has a world of their own inside their head, that we are each as complicated and fucked up as the one after us.