The Set-In-My-Ways Danger Zone

Something hit me recently, and it wasn’t a joyous revelation. I realised that I may have developed a wee crush on someone.

Now he’s completely unsuitable for me, for reasons other than his personality. He’s a really adorable guy, it just wouldn’t work. But that wasn’t the realisation that hit me. Here’s what it was: I was just not in the humour to fancy someone anymore.

Once upon a time, I would have delighted in the prospect of embarking on a new chase (whether the person in question enjoyed the chase themselves was another story). Now, well…I just can’t be arsed. All that thinking and feeling and wondering and deciphering – it’s a young gal’s game. All these years in the single sphere have withered my young, dynamic sense of hope down to a mummified, leathery nub. Like, what’s the point? It’s all going to go tits-up anyway.

However, there’s another side to this seemingly miserable coin. I’m finding it far too easy to just get on with life by myself. I’m lucky enough to have found an absolute gem of a place I can call my home where I live alone. AND I LOVE IT. Even the phrase “I live alone” conjures up a sad, sombre onomatopoeia when uttered aloud. To me though, it speaks of peace and solitude. I cannot describe in enough glowing terms the sense of relief when I stick my key in the door and let myself back into my inner-city sanctuary. There’s nobody waiting for me, and it’s fantastic.I don’t have to evaluate aloud how my day went; to be honest, most days I don’t know the answer. I don’t have to ask someone how theirs went, while I stand there and contemplate whether or not I’ll look rude if I yawn so hard that I get whiplash. It’s not that I don’t care how other people’s lives are going, it’s just at that moment, I’ve no headspace for their responses. There’s no talking to me in the immediate aftermath of my own day-long living art performance, where I portray some sort of functioning adult. All I want to do is decompress, remove my cunning daily Grown-up Disguise, throw on a leopard-print Onesie and devour a bowl of microwave popcorn for dinner. Is that too much to ask?

My only concern in this currently blissful state, is that I’m circling the drain of confirmed bachelorhood. Like one day I’ll wake up in my fifties or sixties and realise I’ve never made room in my life physically or emotionally for a partner – and I’ll just sigh and pour another breakfast gin for myself. I’m lucky in that I don’t have the ticking timebomb of my vacant ovaries to torment the shit out of me while I try to work out why I’m such a shithead magnet when it comes to the men I’ve been involved with. Not wanting to have any children frees me from the pressure to have landed a Someone to procreate with. Sorry guys, there’s no best-before date on this bad girl.

I guess I’m in danger of getting properly set in my ways as things are now. Cruising along happily, working on reaching my career & life goals, while studiously trying to ignore the fact that I’m actually incredibly lonely. I’ve had lots of really exciting developments in my life in recent years that would have been all the sweeter to experience with a partner-in-crime standing beside me cheering on proudly. The problem lies in whether the safety of my happy uncompromising solo state has a far stronger pull than the loneliness and longing to share a life with another human. At the moment, it’s hard to tell. I mean, do I really want to have a restriction on how many episodes of Narcos I can watch in a row just because someone else wants to watch them together? Please. El Patron waits for no-one.

I suppose there’s hope for me yet, because I’m sitting here writing about it. Maybe it’s not that I’ll close myself off permanently from the possibility of having a love in my life. Maybe it’s just that it’ll take waaay more work on my part to allow a potential mate to chisel a crack through my cynical cement-covered heart. Then, and only then, will I relinquish a modicum of control and space to the brave soul who breaches the walls. Who knows? After a few years I might even let him keep a toothbrush at my place.

I SAID MIGHT. Don’t get all gooey-eyed on me now.