You rebel.
There is something to be said about this time of year.
Christmas. The season of joy. Of giving. Of love.
We get to bake amazing treats, shop for presents for family and friends, decorate our houses with lights and snowmen and nativity scenes. We wear ugly sweaters and santa hats and sing songs about snow. We watch Elf over and over, carry on family traditions, and prepare for a new year.
It's a magical time.
It has always been a particularly hard time for me. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse every time I talk about being single but I want to preface this by saying two things:
1. Please don't try to tell me that I will find someone in time. That a relationship will happen for me and just hold on for the right guy and blah blah blah I just threw up. I have been told that since I was 15 years old...and quite frankly, it makes me feel like a failure as a woman. When I'm told that I just need to be patient and wait...it makes me angry--hateful even. It is NOT a comforting thing to say to a single woman in her mid 20s. It just isn't. Try something along the lines of: Well at least there is Starbucks. Or: Good thing you have Netflix to keep you company!
2. This post is NOT a pity party for me. Nor should it be read as a pity party for anyone else. I have something to say to my married friends. And they need to hear it from someone who is single.
Ready?
I spend my time alone. I go to work, either at school teaching some pretty cool kids; or nannying for my boys...and then I come home and that's about it. My best friend drags me out with her every so often and she only gets away with it because she is my sister. If I didn't live with my parents. I probably wouldn't speak to a single person from after school Friday until Monday morning. I have wrapped myself in this cushion of solitude and there are only a few people who have dared to worm their way in during the course of my life. It's 9pm on a Saturday night and while my friends are off getting engaged...I am sitting silent in the dark with only the light of my Christmas tree. This is my reality.
Did you ever stop to think that there are people who have never heard someone tell them that they love them? I'm not talking about a parent, a sibling, or a friend...but a lover, a partner, a "significant other" if you will. Married, engaged, dating, loved friends of mine, you are lucky to have experienced something I have not. I have never heard the words "I love you" come from someone that I have loved. I have heard it a thousand times from my family and my closest friends, so do not think me deprived of love. I know how loved I am. I know the rivers of love that wash over me. But there is a piece missing in my life, and it's always around Christmas that it burns the most. The ache is almost unbearable, the sorrow fills every part of my soul. It's the absence of something I've never even had.
How can one miss something they've never had?
But you, dear friend, the one reading this who is married, engaged, or in a relationship....you've heard that simple phrase before. You've experienced what it means to be loved, to be chosen, to be wanted. You have a gift that men have fought and died for. They write songs about it, tales are told, novels and movies explode with stories of love. And you have it.
And I watch you waste it. You take it for granted because it's normal for you. Fighting, bickering, and arguments are commonplace. Friend after friend comes to me to tell me their marriage woes and it shatters my soul.
Oh loved one, do you not see? Do you not realize? So many of us long for a taste of what you have, a fraction of that emotion. To be wanted, desired, chosen, adored...oh loved one, wake up!
I want to call you to action this Christmas. Stop what you are doing and tell your spouse (or fiance/e, boy/girlfriend, or whatever) right now. Tell them you love them. Tell them that you still choose them. That you adore them and are so glad that they chose you too.
This is the season of joy, of giving, of love. Let's not waste it.
And if you are single like I am...don't worry. There is always Starbucks.
