Ahead of next year, or as I am currently referring to it, the year of 6 weddings, I have started to feel very sad and isolated. My status as a singleton is becoming somewhat more permanent than I had ever anticipated and it is causing me to start wondering if I will ever find someone who genuinely gives a crap.
How can one have a positive outlook when all the evidence points firmly at a negative outcome? How can you feel good about yourself when the way people treat you directly undermines how you view yourself? How can you feel that it's ok to be alone when people behave as if it's not ok at all and even your godchildren think it's odd you don't have kids. I didn't choose this. I didn't ask for this but this is what I have so what do I do?
People offer advice, they offer platitudes, they tell you they know what it's like "we've all been there!" or "I was single for ages" yeah, ok, in your twenties! The truth is that single in your thirties is like nothing you have ever experienced. It isn't like Bridget Jones or Sex and the City. It is long days and nights with only yourself for company. It is knowing you are the last one to be picked. It is being left out of things because you are an odd number or you don't have children. It is knowing no matter what people say, you just aren't good enough.
I know what you're thinking "try internet dating!". No. I did. I tried and it was horrendous. Messages from men wanting a quick shag, photos I never asked for, painful dates with unsuitable knob ends. I didn't tell my friends I was doing it, mostly because I didn't want the pity when it didn't work out. Which it didn't. Obviously!
Then there is when guys you know make a move and try to shift you out of the friendzone. You think about it, you decide it might be ok and then they mug you off. Those are the ones that hurt most because you figure a friend wouldn't hurt you like that. I have had that happen a couple of times this year too.
All in all: I want a handbook. I want a guide to the pitfalls of 30something singledom. I want to know it isn't just me. I want to know it will be ok. Most of all I just don't want to be lonely anymore.
