When I was a teenager my dad’s friend told me, “Kid, you are one of the only people I can picture being okay single for the rest of your life.” I was furious at him. The prospect of being single forever sounded lonely, isolating, and terrifying. I wanted to find deep love, and spend my life with someone. Marriage and kids were never really a fantasy for me. I would still rather donate a kidney than live in the suburbs. But I did want to have a partner that could be an ally.
Now I am wondering if he may have been right. Could I spend the rest of my life single? I am single, but I don’t feel single living here amongst thirty or so other people. There is always someone to eat with, talk with, cry with, have sex with, cuddle with, and love with. If I need support someone will give it to me. If someone else needs support and I can provide it, I do. Granted, the someone is not always the same person. But last week I was sick with a fever and I had a ride to the doctor, a person to bring me soup, and someone to kick my ass out of bed when it was time to get up. Does it have to be one person that provides the comfort, love, and attention in order to cultivate deep intimacy? I’m not sure. I know that I get what I need, but at the end of the day it doesn’t feel like I owe anybody anything. I know that I am whole and someone else does not need to complete me.
And yet there is still a part of me that wants that thing, and feels a little bit broken without it. Part of me wants the gooey, messy, sticky, sweet chocolate cake love in my life. The type I see in romantic comedies, complete with fights in the rain, one-line revelations, and make-up sex. I met a girl last night at a party and caught my mind wandering to that place. “Could she be the one?” I asked myself. The one that does what? Tames me: puts me in a house in the east bay with a dog that I treat like my child. Do I really want that? I think not. But there are those things: sex that feels like coming home, someone telling me that I am impossible to live without, knowing every story of her past and her knowing mine. The soft, sticky, cotton candy that dissolves in your mouth feeling of love that I miss.
