This is my go-to quote any time I question my love life. I’ve found, though, that it can work quite well with questioning a lot of things, actually…questioning myself, questioning my position, or questioning anything worth questioning I guess… life, how’s that? If you ever find yourself in need, I’ll let you borrow it sometime. 

The Frenemy is a blog I like to read every now and then; I love the random life topics she chooses mixed with her “this is me, deal with it” writing style. I can relate and laugh at the same time. And before I start rambling, making this post even longer, I’m going to stop myself and let you read on… I chose to reblog this particular post because I couldn’t say it any better myself. Go ahead, spend the extra 5:37 minutes it takes to read this, it’s worth your while. 

(Exit Kelli, Enter Frenemy).

thefrenemy:

Make It Worthwhile, Chump

I could sit here and complain about how I’m single because oh, Christ, how I can get good at doing that. 

There’s a couple of drunken nights I can recall in the long stretch of time I’ve been single or ‘unable to introduce a plus one at cocktail parties.’ Nights where I swig wine out of the bottle and detest myself for doing that, because it might be exactly why I’m alone. And no, I don’t go to cocktail parties, it’s just that most of the things I know about relationships I learned from movies and my own interpretations of those movies, so it’s what I have to go on. Being in a relationship, in my mind, means going to those parties and wearing sweaters and trying somebody’s dip they made in their very own Cuisinart. We haven’t seen..We haven’t checked that place out…We loved…We are so excited, you say, he says, and then you rest on each other’s bodies during the subway ride home. Relationships are drinking tea in the morning curled up in your Hanes matching t-shirts. Deborah seems tired, you acknowledge over the paper and your orange juice and the never-finished, always-lingering crosswords. Don’t be rude. Relationships are long talks in the grocery store over tortilla brands. It is toothpaste on the sink, keys handed over, cabs to two apartments, and the boring mediocrity of sharing things while sometimes quarreling over Wednesday plans.

My idea of relationships stems from 90’s television shows, maybe. 

Sometimes, I get bummed out that my life lacks the passion of another person, save for the times I fall in and out of love with people I meet on the subway: Guy #1 was fleeting, as it was only two stops. It was him and I, leaning on the pole and examining what was in each other’s grocery bags. He had vegetables and cheese, I had three bottles of three dollar wine. In that, there was a meal somewhere. Guy #2 was a long ride and broke down borders- we crossed from Brooklyn into Manhattan while he read Love in the Time of Cholera and I turned down my music and side-glanced him. I like these moments because they are in my mind, and are therefore perfect. These are all I have sometimes, and this sometimes prompts me to stare at the bars on my window and wonder why I have been single for three years. I have bumps. I have month long flings with somebody who chastises me or is too aggressive or has too much indifference for things to last. They all end with me, staring at the phone, wondering why I text as much as I do when I’m smitten.

Most of the time, I know exactly why I’m single. It is because I love to be alone. It is not simply the independence of it- there are plenty of independent people who are in a couple-but that freedom doesn’t hurt my case. I like sitting on my couch and swinging my legs like a child, eating things with my fingers without constantly checking my phone. I like not worrying too much about the hair on my upper thighs, or if I smell like perfume. I like not having plans or obligations to anybody but the friends I have built up for years, I like taking long walks on date nights or getting into a new TV show by myself. Still, that’s not even a chunk of it. The truth is, I am single because I am waiting for somebody who is really fucking special. I’m talking a 2-for-1 pizza slice special, a best restaurant you found on your own special, the best passage from the best book special, the first day of fall special. That sounds like the Yoplait campaign ‘it is so good,’ but you have to get cheesy when you are thinking of things and in particular, a person, that does not exist.  This is what I really want- a person that does not exist yet. So it’s not just some crummy pack-a-day habit with whiskey breath, or some sex that means nothing but I want it to mean something, or an awkward Italian dinner with somebody I met drunk. It’s a guy with a really good laugh and really good hands.

I get a lot of douchebags, a phrase that I never understand but somehow applies to this scenario. The non-callers, the guys obsessed more with themselves than I can stomach, the guys who are still getting over their exes, the ones who ‘don’t like labels.’ I don’t blame them, I find them and seek them out because I still crave the aloneness, I am still not ready to let go of the hope of somebody lovely. I have not yet found somebody better than that hope.

This sounds big and important and hard to find, but it really boils down to something simple: To make me sacrifice the life that I have grown to love, the single life of napping on a Sunday sprawled out diagonally, or the long nights I stare and think and wonder if I’ll ever find somebody that appreciates my love for olives and licking my fingers? You have to be worthwhile. And all it takes to be worthwhile is this- I want to talk to you for as long as I can stay up at night. I want to never worry or question the foundations of what we have. I want to watch movies with you in my socks, movies we’ve both seen before, and I want you to make me laugh at the things that are wrong with me. And all that means is I really, really want you to be alive. With me. As annoying and frustrating as that might get some days, I just want to find a you that I couldn’t even have made up. A good and a bad, an exciting thing that is worth sacrificing things for.

In return, I will shave my legs. I will stop watching TV by myself and start watching it with you. I will try to transfer the many thoughts and feelings I have and like to hide onto your ears. I will make you dinner at least once and I will try not to constantly complain. I do that when I get comfortable with somebody, by the way. I complain a lot.

Just make yourself..too good to turn down. A real okay, we can work something out here kind of thing. I find that worth waiting for, and so wait I will.