single ladies (found on letters from a lonely heart)

The life of a single woman is a whirlwind of contradictions. One minute you like a guy, the next you don’t; one day you have $2,000 in the bank, the next you’re chasing pennies around the floorboard of your car to afford a McDonald’s cheeseburger for dinner; one week you feel single and fabulous, the next you just feel lonely and mediocre. It happens to the best of us. There is no real safety net for a single woman. No fierce protector. No knight in shining armor to swoop in and scare all the bad guys away when we’re feeling picked on at work. No protective cocoon to run to when we’re feeling our inner caterpillar is outweighing our inner butterfly. We are, quite literally – single. Singular. Solo. Alone. We have moments where we look at the martini glass as half empty, then kick ourselves for doing so. We have Facebook stalking expeditions in which we scope out all our exes just to see how balding and ugly and miserable they are now, then feel somehow betrayed when they look…dare I say it?...good. We have really brave moments when we kill an enormous spider or change a tire by ourselves and we become completely convinced that all we need to do is slap an “S” on our chest and we could save the world. We dance all night with our girlfriends then ace our presentation at work the next day going on nothing but Starbucks and adrenalin (and wearing the same clothes we had on the night before). We face the condescending looks at family gatherings and high school reunions when people learn that we’re not dating anyone and pat on us like we’re their pet and say: “Oh, don’t worry. You’re surely next!” We buy hundreds of dollars in wedding gifts and baby gifts and christening gifts and bar mitzvah gifts for all of our married friends without batting an eye, knowing that this might well be the closest we ever get to a gift registry. We lose jobs and friends and parents and lovers…and sometimes have no one but our pillow to witness our tears. We fall in love - deeply, madly, passionately in love – and sometimes, they forget to love us back. Sometimes we love someone for years, without the other person even knowing we exist. We suffer in silence, hoping against hope that one day they’ll not just look at us, but really SEE us; that they’ll not just want us, but NEED us. Sometimes life offers us a second chance to get it right…and sometimes life just offers us a second chance to say goodbye. Sometimes even after all the hurt, and all the waiting, and all the hoping, and all the wishing…for reasons beyond our control, it still doesn’t work out. Sometimes you just know you know the only way to be true to YOU is to let him go. If we’re lucky, we have a best friend to reflect our hearts back to us and show us our strength when we’ve lost our way. And if we’re REALLY lucky, we have 46,000 incredibly brave, sassy, independent, beautiful, strong honorary best friends to inspire us to be a better version of ourselves…to walk our talk…to live up to a higher standard…and to never lose the faith that someday, some way, amidst all the many frogs, our Prince Charming will emerge and sweep us off into our Happily Ever After. This, my dear friends, is my way of saying thank you. Thank you for believing in what I have to say. Thank you for continuing to faithfully follow me. Thank you for keeping me on my toes and inspiring me to be the very best woman that I can be. And most of all, thank you for making me so incredibly proud to call myself a single woman. I am certainly in good company among you. And here’s the good news…for you, for me, for all single women. We are tough. We are bold. We are fierce. We are a force to be reckoned with. We face the world the single way every single day…and we don’t back down. We don’t let the idea of going to a movie alone intimidate us. We don’t let the threat of bumping into an ex stop us from going to the most fabulous party in town with our head held high. We walk a path that many women will never have to walk…a path that forces us to constantly step out of our comfort zones…a path that a majority of the women we grew up with and acted as bridesmaids for will never have to walk. The journey of a single woman is not an easy one – but we welcome the danger. We welcome the unknown. We embrace our freedom as the gift that it is…we pay our own way…we march to the beat of our own drum and we ask permission from no one to do so. There is a fire in the soul of a single woman that can never quite be tamed…an unwillingness to settle…an independence all our own, built from the knowledge that we can do absolutely anything without calling for backup and we can look damn good doing it. There is a wisdom we possess that comes from surviving many a broken heart…a shine to us from learning how to make an entrance into a room accompanied by no one but me, myself and I…a confidence that comes from knowing we are not afraid to fall…because each time we fall, Life presents us with another opportunity to get up and move up. We realize a happy life is more important than a happy ending…and that we don’t need a significant other to lead a significant life. And if one day, our Prince does find us, we won’t expect him to complete us, but to compliment us. Because we are strong. We are invincible. We are all…The Single Woman.