Settle for somebody who will bring you flowers: not just for birthdays and anniversaries, but also, just because. Somebody who will move all your spiders. Somebody who lends you books with the page corners folded down and scribbled notes in the dust jacket like a portal to their thoughts. Settle for a person who will hold a constant umbrella over your parade.
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Those who have been single for a long time will know that you gather up exes. The significant others who actually, in the grand scheme of things, turned out not to be so significant. Things didn’t get serious for long enough to cause a full-on heartbroken split from when things end, and most of the time you don’t meet the prerequisites to be banished from each others lives.
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You don’t hear about the hours they spend memorising freckles. You don’t hear about the time they bought a pair of socks from Joy The Store at the train station – full price! £8 on a pair of socks! – so that you wouldn’t have to re-wear a pair. You don’t hear about the picturesque night they practised slow dancing when they got in from the club, an endeavour that ended with their first perfect kiss timed miraculously with a Bright Eyes chorus at sunrise, a moment so utterly cheesy it could have been a scene in a John Green novel. Continue reading
I sometimes feel as though my life is like a parade of people I used to know. Most of my friend pool has been in my life for quite some time, and at this point I have a fair number of exes to run into; friends of friends; other peoples housemates; ex-colleagues; a pal from “back home”, somebody’s cousin who was in town for the weekend. The list goes on. Continue reading
Waking up with a full day off ahead of you and the endless possibilities contained therein. Nothing is too ridiculous or too indulgent to be a viable way to spend the day. Going to an exhibition. Changing your hair ribbon three times. Watching 5 episodes of Bojack. Re-reading your old diaries for half an hour and then finishing a box of Easter eggs in bed. Talking to your housemates about Domhnall Gleeson vs James Franco for 2 hours in the garden.
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about why I love being single. It was a weird one to write, because like so many of my blogs, I am completely oblivious to the fact that not everybody feels the same way. I assumed that everybody reaches the same conclusions after a while and it was only last year I realised actually, no, a lot of friends of mine are not single through choice and really struggle with being single. They analyse obsessively over how dates have gone, if they’ll ever find somebody, when they’ll get a message back or when they’ll find “the one”.
This is part of a new series I’m calling LEIA: Laila Explains It All. I’ll explain at the end!!!
Today on the blog I’m going to get a bit more personal. I’m going to talk frankly about a side of my life that I rarely discuss in public: my love life. I often find myself in conversations with friends who are unhappy being single. They feel that being single is a struggle, a stigma, something to obsess over or something scary. I’ve kind of assumed the role of “advisor” in my friendship group because I have been single for a very long time and navigated a lot of scenarios that being single tends to throw up; dating, flings, one night stands and the like. They miss being in a relationship, they can’t find “the one”, they imagine they’re unlovable, or they’re anxious about joining the dating “game”.
I have genuinely never felt like that. People don’t believe me but it’s true, really! I LOVE being single. I am probably the archetypal single girl – I’m a ‘Samantha’ in that I love dating. I love the chase, the guessing games, the first dates, the planning, the getting-ready, the gossiping with your friends after, the updates, the late-night chats, the mutual discoveries, the working out how you feel. I love moving on and finding something new and dashing off to the next prospect.
As a teenager, there was a lot of pressure to be in a relationship, but these days, I have a great life in which I devote myself wholeheartedly to things I love. I have the absolute best friends in the world, my dream job, a wonderful house and housemates in North London. I’ve never bothered to think too much about finding anybody to share it with, because I already do share everything with my wonderful friends (who are basically family to me). I’ve never defined myself by my relationship status; and therefore, nobody else has either.
I care deeply about my life and getting the most out of it. I want a life that’s brimming with anecdotes, filled with adventures, and never-ending nights out. Dating and relationships are a fun hobby. A sport alongside a life filled with things I actually care about and want to devote my time too: my friends, my career, my beliefs. Who knows if there’s a Mr Right or a soulmate out there somewhere? I never, ever ponder these things – there’s any number of people I could get on with in the meantime and if somebody turns up, great, if nobody does, who cares? I can’t imagine anything more boring or alarming than by defining myself by my relationship status. I won’t be pranging out on a Friday night in sobbing into my Netflix account – I’ll be down the pub with my mates, or at the back writing songs about my idols, or planning my next holiday abroad.
In fact, I struggle to think about what a relationship could provide that I do not have already. I have self-worth, I have value, I have companionship, I have excitement, I have a life filled with happiness and days out and nice things and there’s not a lot else I really want. I have a lot, basically. I don’t need anybody to provide me with those things, because I found them for myself. Being single gives me a life where I put myself first, where I can spend all my time and energy making this little patch of the world exactly where I want to be – and that’s why I love being single.
This is part of a new series I’m calling LEIA: Laila Explains It All. I seem to have a fairly unique view amongst my pals on this kind of personal stuff – which I’d quite like to share, if it’s not too egotistical! Let me know what you’d like to see – stories of dating, advice, relationship probs or whatever :)
TAPE PARADE 