The holidays and singleness go together like fish and cheese. Not overly offensive at a glance, but when you get down to it, it just falls a bit short of a decent Christmas dinner. If you’re home with your family for Christmas there are the inevitable questions to tackle from well meaning, but seriously frustrating distant relations.
What happened to Mr. X who you were dating last year, Almaz? Oh well, that’s a shame you can’t seem to hold down a man for more than 3 weeks. Oh yes, that’s very modern of you to be so upbeat about the fact that you’re still not married and almost 26. Thank God you’re a bright girl and can make your own living. That never would have happened in my day. I was married at 20, you know. 30 will be kicking on your door before you know it, love. Tick, tock, better get a move on.
Or if you’re away from home living in another country, as I am now, there are the pseudo sympathy check-ins from coupled-up friends who you’ve only really ever hung out with once or twice in the past year, looking to do some Christmas charity work.
Look, all I’m saying hun is that if you want to come stay for Christmas with my mum, dad, my fiancé, my 2 brothers, plus their wives, you are more than welcome. There will be plenty of room in the 2 bedroom cottage in Oxford and it doesn’t matter you’ll be the only single one there, with no family to speak of within a 25 hour flight time of England, and no man who loves you. Nobody will mind, that you’re alone. We love single people. Some of our best friends are single.
Classic.
I’m going to be honest. Being 25 and single isn’t that uncommon in this day and age, in fact I consider it to be fairly normal. I’ve never really had a problem with being by myself, or with the fact I haven’t yet found ‘the one’. Hell, I’m even pretty comfortable with the fact that the closest thing I currently have to an adult relationship is my weekly visits to Raj, the man who sells me cheap bottles of prosecco at the local Peckham off-license (that’s a dairy, for all my Kiwi friends). And even though I sometimes feel like I have aged about 55 years since I was 21-years-old, I still know that I am young, with my whole life ahead of me and plenty of time to experience love.
If there is even glimmer of singleness anxiety inside of you, a tiny smidge of fear that you’ll be alone forever, or even the smallest shred of doubt in your mind that occasionally tries to convince you that you are less of a person because you are single, Christmas has a nasty habit of bringing it all up to the surface.
But let me be real for a sec. If there is even glimmer of singleness anxiety inside of you, a tiny smidge of fear that you’ll be alone forever, or even the smallest shred of doubt in your mind that occasionally tries to convince you that you are less of a person because you are single, Christmas has a nasty habit of bringing it all up to the surface.
You can bet your Kayla-Itsines-toned-ass that the pressure of the holidays will find a way to highlight this anxiety within you. Santa will even wrap it up in a pretty little bow, and carefully place it under the Christmas tree for you to unwrap on Christmas morning, leading to that inevitable feeling of utter crap and isolation. Merry Christmas, kids. Doesn’t it feel great to be totally alone and thousands of miles from home?
It doesn’t matter how old you are, fear it not an age based illness and too many of us spend our lives fearing aloneness. You might be 18, or you might be 48, but the fear still feels the same. For some of us it’s because we have seen our parents’ marriages fail and we are terrified of the same happening to us. For others it’s because we are struggling to know who we really are and we have fallen into the trap of thinking a relationship will complete us. It won’t by the way, trust me.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, fear it not an age based illness and too many of us spend our lives fearing aloneness.
Christmas has a nasty habit of bringing these feelings to the surface, as we scroll our Instagram feeds to see young couples spending their first Christmas in a house they saved up to buy together in Lower Hutt, or baby’s first Christmas in Nelson with the grandparents. It can sometimes feel like everyone has somebody to love. Except you.
I’ve been thinking a bit about this lately and I have come to the conclusion that we need to get over this idea that special occasions are so much better when we are coupled-up and constantly cuddling through the holidays. Sure, it’s nice having somebody to love, even a Nun would admit that. But it’s also nice to have time away from work to spend with your best friends, or to do some baking with your mum. Or to spend money buying yourself some new shoes for New Years Eve, instead of spending money buying your partner another damn rugby ball he will inevitably lose at the beach before January even hits.
You will only be afraid of being alone if you allow yourself to believe you are actually alone. When you take a moment to look around at all of the wonderful people in your life, I guarantee you that feelings of aloneness will quickly vanish. After all, being single and being alone are two very different things and if you are spending Christmas with people you love, that’s all that matters really.
And if all else fails, there’s always those mountains of Christmas treats to help carry you through until the New Year and the promise of a mysterious handsome stranger appearing out of the blue come New Year’s Eve.
Merry Christmas, my single friends.
