How I learned to love to be single

For all my life, in terms of relationships, it's just been me, myself and I. I just fancied writing about something that, maybe, everyone feels like they have to do. I know that I've felt slightly abnormal because I haven't followed the 'conventions of teenage-hood', as it were. But I guess I haven't found the right person. In fact, the more and more I think about it, it seems like I might be happier, single. I don't want this post to later be hypocritical. What I write today is jut how I feel now. (Also, this is aimed at no one in particular, but just my general experience :D) 

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Growing up, I think much of my school life revolved around who was going out with who. It was like trivia: Guess who's going out with ___?!" 

It was always quite exciting to find out but more so to see how long people could keep the girlfriend and boyfriend status up. 

As we moved from little year 7s to year 10s and 11s, relationships began to last longer than a matter of weeks that you could count on your right hand. 

Love was now real. 

I wasn't ready for a boyfriend in year 7. In fact, I was still playing with Barbie's when I got home after school. But, low and behold, that was the last time I ever had a 'boyfriend'. I say boyfriend like this because, even thought we said we were on a relationship, we most probably weren't. 

I hated being social outside of school and so cinema dates and going to each others houses was a no-go. We simply saw each other in school. But even then, it wasn't love so much as it was experimental. 

But still, for all my false delusions about love, I still wanted to have someone. 

Every new school year I thought: this will be it. But every year I ended, I was still single.

It was finally at university when I realised how important it was to have your own time. I saw people every day. When I cooked dinner. I heard them as I went to bed. I bumped into everyone, everywhere. 

Though the social side of things has really helped me and is something that I really love about uni, I did still need my free time. 

I found a few spare moments to blog. But I hardly ever had time to read for pleasure nor work on writing stories. There was always something to be done and if I rejected social meetings in order to spend time with me, myself and I on a hobby, I felt anti-social.

I missed the time I had to myself. To do nothing or, conversely, work on something extra-ordinary. 

I also began to work out that being in love with someone was an incredibly emotional and time-consuming thing! (It also ate most of your credit and got you to watch films that you wouldn't normally watch, with food that you wouldn't normally have bought). 

Having a boyfriend was all-encompassing. You had to think for not only 1 person but 2. 

Maybe that's because I'm selfish in that respect, or maybe because I just don't know enough but there are some things I love about being un-romantically-attached. 

- I can eat what I want by the call of my stomach 

- I spend more time with my friends 

- I can get a cheap phone tariff 

- I can choose to see family or go on trips at the drop of a hat 

- I can spend more money on my family's presents at Christmas 

- it's ok to spend all my holiday in Dubai 

Maybe things will change as I get older, but sometimes there are people who ask: 'is there anyone you like?' Or who say: 'He'd be good boyfriend material.' But to both statements I would have to answer 'no' and 'maybe' and as for why: 'because I just like it this way.' 

The Transformation

Being judgmental is in our nature. Like God cast his hands on the Earth. Created Adam and from his rib created Eve, then threw away the instruction manual and bypassed love. 

"Thou shalt have the power of judgment." 

I bet they don't tell you that in Religious Studies. Perhaps that's because it's not true. Yet regardless of our God-given or self-created 'right', no one can deny the unruly and overpowering nature of judgmental-ness that comes from human character. 

No one's perfect - we've been told it enough times - and because of this; self-consciousness is just another one of our by-products like excess wind and indigestion. 

For as long as I can remember I've been rather self-concious. Not 'sexy' enough to strip down into a bikini at 10 years old. Not cool enough to bare all and go clubbing in anything less than a pair of fur boots and jeans at my first under-seventeens 'disco' at Liquids. There was always something that stopped me. But a body I wasn't entirely proud of or hair that wouldn't fasten like the other girls in my year tended to be something I could mask. And so the (extra) timid, subconscious me would only be revealed  at selected times when each section of my body was under pressure to do so. All other intervals, around family and playing on the computer, would show my semi-shy but nonetheless, cheery personality.

Yet there was one product of my creation that I - and everyone else, for that matter - HAD to confront. When I looked at myself and smiled to the mirror, sometimes feeling a little special with some mismatched and fluorescent outfit I'd put together, the lure of an elongating and darkening upper lip caught me every time and dragged me under. Once I saw it, the said 'moustache', I couldn't shake my own critical thoughts let alone the criticisms of others. When I knew I'd seen it that day suddenly everyone in the world was looking at me; pointing and jeering. Some were but not everyone. 

It only really became a problem when I was in secondary school. I would heard people talking about it. Boys would point it out and even when friends or teachers talked to me they wouldn't talk to me, they'd talk to it. It destroyed me every time. On occasions people would ask why I hadn't had a boyfriend - as many people ask every teenage girl. I would shrug, knowing deep down the potential and, most probable, reason why. 

But for all the stick I got, I failed to publicly admit its existence. I don't so much want to show it off as to avoid succumbing to a pressure of judgments which would destroy the image God had clearly wanted to create with me. But by year 12 I was conned into doing it, unable to face a life of being the hairy one. 

I had had my hair cut in a salon in Dubai - an annual affair.  

"It looks so pretty but ... You've just got this..." The hairdresser remarked drawing her finger seductively over her own lip. The discretion in Dubai is evident. 

Let it be a lesson, once you let someone win with their 'suggestion' you give them full power to abuse you as they wish. Reluctantly I consented only to be dragged into the beauty room and be told of how long and thick the hair was. The hairdresser unleashed every thought she'd had of me from when I walked in to how it would effect my future. 

I walked out of that salon faster than ever; embarrassed, head hanging but also very very happy. I could now look myself in my reflection and not have to cover my lip to see what I'd look like without a rim of hair over it. 

And every time I go for subsequent waxes I come out of the salon with a huge self confidence I shouldn't have. Yes it makes me feel nice and yes "I am now a lady, again!" as the beautician remarked today but why should I need materialism to boost my self-confidence. Why should I be saving money to pay for treatments just to cull thoughts I can't take, stares I don't want and full-frontal abuse? 

"Thou shalt be judgemental" - a phrase I'm pretty sure God didn't and would never say, nevertheless still stands.