Embracing my singleness and trying to calm the cray cray

Those of you who read any of my Stratejoy posts probably read my fancy little bio that appeared at the end of every post. For anyone who's never seen it, here it is:

Now, here's a thing that probably 0 of you ever thought when reading this:

"Hey, Stratejoy blogging is a 5 month gig. Why would you write about being single when that's something that could very easily change over half a year?"

And you would be right. When our season started, 3 out of 7 of us season 6 bloggers were single. By the time the season was over, only 1 of us was. And, as you probably guessed, it was the one of us who was confident enough in the consistency of her singleness to put it in a bio that would run publicly for 5 months.

This may seem like the start of a pity party, but you should know me well enough by now to realize that when it comes to relationships (or lack thereof), I don't feel insecure about flying solo.

So I'm not only comfortable in being single, but I'm comfortable in being PERPETUALLY single (although seriously, my Kindle Fire is very sexy indeed). And despite the fact that this trait is theoretically something that changes over time, I still feel like it defines me. But not even in a bad way. It doesn't mark me as some sort of social pariah, it just kind of shows the world that "finding a man" has never really been a top priority in my life (and clearly relationships just don't fall into my lap as they do for some). It's just like, yup, here I am. Blue eyes, 5'5" (almost), loves to read, plays volleyball, single.

The thing about all these traits that I listed is that not only are they all at least very consistent if not permanent, but that I don't think about them all the time. Aside from this whole series about being single, I don't typically spend that much time thinking or writing about how I'm not in a relationship. It's just a part of who I am that for the most part stays in the background.

I know this post has no point as of yet, and, SPOILER ALERT, it probably won't ever. But I wanted to talk about why I've been thinking about this stuff lately.

A lot of you have probably heard married people say things like "Oh I'm so glad I don't have to do the single thing anymore." I always resent those comments because a) I obviously don't feel inferior to married people by sheer virtue of my being single, and b) what do you mean "the single thing"? The thing where I don't have anyone to have stupid fights with and the thing where I can walk into any bar or event or ANYWHERE and see a whole range of possible people with whom I could get my makeout on? Because to me, those things are great.

This past weekend, though, I went into one of these crazy woman downward spirals that essentially consisted of the following events:

Text guy
No response
Wait awhile
Next day, still no response
Gchat whine to friends
Day drink heavily
Text whine to friends
WHAT DID I DO WRONG I HATE MYSELF
Being drunk makes you sadder FYI
I FEEL SO STUPID I SHOULD NEVER HAVE TEXTED
Keep drinking
Keep text whining
Think about how BLINDSIDED I am by him ignoring me
JUST KEEP SWIMMING DRINKING

And so on. It wasn't my finest hour.

As I sat there, my mind a ridiculous blur of mimosas and batshit crazy, I thought, "I GET IT NOW. THIS IS THE BULLSHIT MARRIED PEOPLE ARE HAPPY TO NOT DEAL WITH ANYMORE."

Now that I'm sober and now that the guy has texted me back as I probably should have realized he would and NEXT TIME, SELF, DON'T FREAK THE FUCK OUT, I think about how upset I got and I'm not happy with it.

First of all, that is not the woman I want to be.

Second of all, I do not know or care enough about this guy to warrant acting like that.

Newsflash, this post has a point now because I just thought of one. Here goes.

Any permanent or semi-permanent trait is going to have pros and cons. My blue eyes, for example, are pretty. But having light eyes also means that I look squinty in any pictures taken outdoors.

Similarly, if I'm going to embrace being single, as I clearly already have, I have to take the ups with the downs. So while I have the freedom to go to a friend's party and mingle with one of her cute guy friends, I have to also be prepared to RATIONALLY deal with what happens if it doesn't work out exactly how I want it to or even if it doesn't work out at all.

Acceptance, guys. Coming to terms with all my shit.

This is good.

**This is my new series called Stratejoy Monday. To learn more about all this goodness, see the first 5 months of my Stratejoy journey here.