It was a joke about the dozens of women in the comments performing verbal gymnastics to justify the fact that they got married young — as if anyone personally cares what Nicole from Utah is doing at 22.

What surprised me wasn’t the disagreement. It was the ferocity.

Dozens of women, teeth bared, ready to call me everything but my name — over a man. Over their marriage. As if I had attended the wedding. As if I knew them. As if I cared.

I did not realize implying that marriage is not a personality trait would be taken as a personal attack.

Instead of defending myself to teenagers on the internet, I’ll offer some big-sister advice. It won’t be gentle. It might be rude. But it’s honest.

Some women should be wives and mothers. Truly. Cook the dinners. Make the beds. Chase the kids. Do it at 18, 20, or 22 — I genuinely do not give a shit.

Get married. Go in the house. Live your life.

But the second you log onto the internet and start foaming at the mouth because other women chose differently, you’ve already told on yourself.

Don’t hate-share. Don’t send it to the “mommies!! <3” group chat with a prayer emoji and a passive-aggressive sigh. Don’t convince yourself that curiosity is bitterness or that independence is a threat.

Accept your choice as a choice — not a crown.

Because the moment you need strangers to validate it, you’ve admitted it wasn’t enough on its own.

I am exhausted by the internet’s fake “sisterhood of the traveling pants” bullshit. Women are not especially kind to one another. We are competitive, defensive, and deeply unserious about our own insecurity — especially when we feel locked into a life we can’t revise.

Any time someone so much as raises an eyebrow at your decisions, suddenly they’re “single and bitter.”

Who said I was single?

And what exactly am I bitter about?

If your life is so fulfilling, why does a stranger’s throwaway comment unsettle you this much?

Getting married at 22 doesn’t make you superior. It doesn’t make you wiser. It doesn’t make you evolved.

It makes you married.

And if that sentence alone makes you angry, maybe I’m not the problem.

I try not to sound like a misogynist. Or an ice-cold judgmental bitch. I’m not above criticism — trust me, I have my own issues. I avoid conflict. I’m lazy about dating. My self-esteem is a work in progress. I am not a finished product pretending to lecture the masses.

What I do dislike — strongly — are women who pedestalize their roles as wives and mothers and then use them as moral leverage over other women.

Do you know what I actually see when I look at these women?

I don’t see women I envy. I see women who traded curiosity for certainty too early. Women whose friendships quietly evaporated. Whose ambitions got folded into “someday.” Women who haven’t been asked what they want in so long that the question itself feels insulting.

I see lives that shrink instead of expand.

And yes — that terrifies them.

When your entire identity is “someone’s wife” or “someone’s mom,” every other woman becomes a threat. Of course you assume everyone wants what you have. Of course you interpret difference as judgment. An understimulated mind will invent competition just to feel alive.

I’m not saying love is stupid. I’m not saying partnership is pointless.

I’m daring the modern woman to interrogate her relationship with herself.

Because it can’t always be about Todd.

Who the fuck is Todd?

Who are you?

What do you like when no one is watching? What do you want that isn’t socially approved? What brings you joy? What scares you? What did you give up without realizing it?

Women are socialized to stop being curious about their interior lives the moment they are chosen. And that is devastating.

I don’t care that much about teenagers being mad that I said marrying your boyfriend young is boring.

I care that women would rather dismiss uncomfortable ideas than sit with the possibility that they built their entire identity around a role instead of a self.

Women don’t fail because they choose marriage or motherhood.

We fail when we confuse a role with a personality — and then attack anyone who reminds us there could have been more.

Gone are the days when making a fuck ton of money was the goal for women. I grew up wanting to be a journalist or a lawyer in New York City. I figured I would live in Tribeca and be decked out in designer. Very CBK, if you will.

I remember when it was all about being “fabulous,” and it was chic that you couldn’t keep a man. Now teenagers are hootin and hollerin about getting married young. Good lord, conservatism is back, y’all.

For a really long time, I always kind of nodded my head and filed my parents’ advice into the “I’ll cross that bridge when I get there” box. Most of it is reassurance—reminders to move at my own pace. What’s meant for me will find me. Vienna waits for you. Oh, mirror in the sky—what is love?

My parents are secretly very big softies, true to their Sagittarius natures. If you’ve been a reader of mine for the last six months, I’m sure it’s finally clicked into place.

A Gemini sun, Sagittarius moon, and Aquarius rising with two Sagittarius parents?!
I know. It explains the dazzling wit.

Anyway, these big softies have laid down some powerful knowledge over the years that finally started making sense in my brain this year. No more claiming “I’m just a girl.”
Nah. I’m a woman.

“Not everyone can come with you, not even me.”

I learned this lesson in the second half of this year. I don’t give up easily. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a clinger. Conversations could always be had. Things could always possibly improve.

But sometimes we just have to accept that we aren’t compatible with everyone.

Some people really are in your life for a season. And most things do happen for a reason. Not to be cryptic, but it’s fascinating how you blink and people can just be gone. My parents have had to remind me that my path is different—that I’m growing and changing. I’m not meant to live a small life. And in the pursuit of that life, sometimes people have to be left behind. Not out of malice, but out of necessity.

When you try to drag the perpetually unwilling along your journey, they become extra weight. You have to exert twice the effort—once to pull them forward, and once to make sure you don’t trip and fall trying to carry you both.

In my desire to grow, I have a habit of sharing my knowledge with others. It came as a shock to me when I was harshly shown that not everyone carries the same attitudes that I do. Not everyone was raised the same way. I’m not saying these are necessarily bad things—variety is the spice of life. I suppose cruelty will always shock me, though.

Our comfort zones are dangerous.

My comfort zone kept me around people who had no business having access to me. And not to be all “rah rah, I have opps” about my life, but I don’t think the people we keep closest even realize the power of their tongue.

I’ve spent decades surrounded by women who mirrored my earliest core wound—because it was familiar. Comfortable. It felt normal to be around women who secretly disliked me without even realizing it—women who questioned my character and eroded my self-esteem.

My ambition, my desire for self-improvement, and the assumption that I deserve to be happy trigger something in the insecure. It was genuinely shocking to me to discover that people are, in fact, jealous of me.

To escape this, I had to make the radical decision to choose myself—and to be “alone.” Not keeping friends around just to say I had them. As a result, I feel like I’ve been floating. I surprisingly care a lot less than I thought I would.

It’s disarming, but it’s also exciting. I’ve grown so much over the last five years—even this year alone. I’ve traveled across the world, lived away from my family, walked a red carpet, and saw Jennifer Lawrence in the flesh. I felt the chill of a Utah winter and genuinely thought I might lose my toes. I’ve had conversations with baristas, men on sidewalks, and the owners of production companies.

I took up my writing at a time when I felt my absolute lowest. Most importantly, I didn’t let negativity make me bitter. I used solitude as a period of reflection and self-knowledge. I’m so far out of my comfort zone that I don’t even know what it looks like anymore.

Harsh, but true: loser women do exist, and they walk among us.

Loser women aren’t insecure women. They aren’t women who are struggling or figuring themselves out. They’re women who refuse to build a self and instead try to live inside someone else.

There are women on this earth who would skin me alive and wear my flesh if they could. I have watched women quite literally steal my hobbies, dating preferences, lingo, personal style, hair color—anything—because they have no sense of self.

And instead of dealing with that, they take their anger out on me—because they could never be the original. Just a copy.

And you may ask: how do you know this for a fact?

Because.

I know me when I see me.

And I’m using a lot of word salad to skip over the point — if you have an inkling that your best friend is competing with you, don’t wait to cut them off like I did.

Trust. Self-trust. Compassion. Vulnerability.

I’m not ashamed. No one can make me feel shame. I’m a human being with wants and desires just like everyone else—and I’ve spent a very long time trying to accept that.

What I will not do anymore is apologize for existing. You will just have to be inconvenienced by my presence. You will hear me. You will see me. You may find me ugly, fat, annoying, or stupid—and I will not care.

I’ve finally realized that I have spent my life surrounded by unmotivated women that admire and resent me because they know they could never be me. As a result, they did their absolute best to make me as small as possible so they would look big in comparison.

These women will spend their entire lives seething at the thought that I never needed them, but chose them to be in my life. And for people who operate under a scarcity mindset? That’s terrifying.

I will trust myself to choose me. I will trust myself to extend compassion and grace toward myself, because I deserve it. I encourage you all to do the same.

Like Beyoncé said: “Goodbye to what has been.”

Goodbye, fair-weather friends.
Goodbye, self-doubt.
Goodbye, fear.
Goodbye, low self-esteem.

I would say it has been a pleasure to know you, but that would be a lie.

It’s been a long year. A beautiful, long year. I’m so grateful. I would never trade my life for anyone else’s.

Cheers to a new year. I’m not slowing down.

If you’re Black, there’s a 95% chance your parents or grandparents have said this to you after you came home crying because you were being bullied. Knowing people dislike me for reasons outside of my control just makes me paranoid. I never cared if they were supposed to motivate me to try harder — I just wished they would leave me alone.

As a dedicated Gossip Girl rewatcher, it was obvious the hatred Serena and Blair shared. Serena was clearly drowning in guilt, and Blair obviously felt overshadowed by Serena.

It doesn’t help that Serena is a statuesque blonde who quite literally towered over Blair and was loved by everyone. Blair projected her deeply rooted inadequacy onto everyone around her. Serena couldn’t put her ego aside to apologize until she was finally caught.

Not only does she have sex with Blair’s boyfriend, Nate — she takes his virginity, something Blair had been intent on making special between the two of them.

And when finally confronted about it, Serena has the nerve to seem shocked and play stupid. Then, in the following episode, she has the nerve to be mad at Nate for telling Blair.

Who wouldn’t hate her?

Blair wasn’t perfect, but most of her behavior was reactionary. Imagine the people closest to you going out of their way to gaslight you and make you feel insane because they can’t be honest.

My therapist once told me the reason I hate liars is because they want to avoid accountability. I never forgot that, especially because these are usually the same people that insist on it from you.

The first time I watched Girls, I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, and in the middle of the worst crisis of my teenage life. One of my close friends knew I liked a guy in our friend group — and apparently she did too, because they started dating. Everything feels apocalyptic at fifteen, but rewatching that moment at twenty-four makes me realize we weren’t even that close. We just shared the same peripheral orbit.

Around that same time, Season 5 and 6 of Girls were airing, and I was watching Hannah get blindsided and betrayed by her best friend, Jessa. Jessa starts a relationship with Adam, Hannah’s ex-boyfriend. To be fair, Adam borderline stalks Jessa into it — he harasses her until she finally tanks her friendship with Hannah and gives in. But still: the betrayal is the betrayal.

What hits harder now is the bigger realization I couldn’t see at fifteen:
Almost all of Hannah’s friends secretly dislike her.
Whether they admit it or not.

Marnie and Jessa, in particular, are obsessed with her in that jealous, slightly repulsed, “why does she get things I don’t?” kind of way. The insecurity oozes through their storylines. Marnie, who in the pilot had the most going for her — great boyfriend, great apartment, great job — slowly loses everything and never recovers. She’s judgmental, condescending, and constantly talking to Hannah like Hannah is beneath her, even while begging for Hannah’s emotional labor. Even at the end, when Marnie “offers” to help Hannah raise her baby, it’s not out of love. It’s because she thinks Hannah is incompetent and wants to supervise her like some kind of project.

Then there’s Jessa. When she and Adam finally end up together, she says, “I’ve wanted this for a long time.”
You wanted your friend’s boyfriend for a long time? Be serious.

Hannah is selfish and borderline narcissistic sometimes, absolutely — but what twenty-something isn’t? Underneath the chaos, she’s one of the only characters with an actual moral center. She shows up when it matters. She picks Jessa up from rehab. She visits Jessa’s grandmother. She supports Marnie through the world’s most delusional wedding. She’s messy, but she’s not cruel.

Jessa, on the other hand, is an addict in every sense: substances, attention, destruction, reinvention. When I was in high school, I thought she was so cool — the accent, the outfits, the careless beauty, the way she floated through the world like nothing stuck to her. Now, at twenty-four, it’s abundantly clear she’s borderline sociopathic. She has always hated Hannah. She loved Hannah’s attention, not Hannah herself. She needed Hannah to adore her so she could feel superior.

And the thing is: Jessa didn’t want Adam because she loved him.
She wanted Adam because Adam wanted Hannah.

She never understood why someone like him would choose someone like Hannah. Hannah had parents who loved her. Hannah had direction, ambition, a belief in her own writing ability. Hannah could be annoying, but she was accepted as she was. Hannah didn’t need to perform a personality to be loved. That made Jessa itch.

And within a few episodes, Jessa and Adam implode. Adam — a professional Captain-Save-A-Hoe — can’t deal with Jessa’s laziness and refusal to grow up. Jessa can’t stop bringing up Hannah, spiraling every time Adam doesn’t indulge the comparison. She needs Adam to reassure her that she “won,” but he doesn’t care. He’s annoyed. He’s moved on. Hannah isn’t performing heartbreak for him, and that makes Jessa feel even worse.

And that old essay fragment of mine keeps coming back:
Jessa feels guilty because Hannah is the only person who truly sees her and loved her anyway.
Adam is furious because Hannah is no longer playing the role he assigned her.
Everyone is jealous of Hannah because everything works out for her in a way that feels unfair.

When I look back at being fifteen — my “friend” swooping in on a boy she knew I liked, the weird competitiveness, the quiet undermining — it all makes sense now. It was never about the boy. It was about proximity, jealousy, attention, and who gets to be the center of someone else’s world.

Mind you, I’m too lazy to compete. You either see me or you don’t. And if you don’t? Y’all got it.

Girl drama is fun to watch but devastating to be a part of. Jealousy and envy make me paranoid, especially when the people dishing it out can’t accept it. I never positioned myself above anyone or decided I was bigger than some program. Life can humble you faster than you can blink.

I never thought I was the girl with “fake friends.” I give people far more grace than I ever give myself because I want to believe in the good of others. I don’t know — I never even considered myself worthy competition. I’m broke 85% of the time and I’m in serious debt. I just show up as myself and decide people either like it or they don’t.

I don’t put on a performance because I don’t even know you, so why would I care if you like me? Y’all aren’t very impressive to me either.

Apparently, this reads as self-righteous, but I can’t help that. Sorry.

There’s a specific kind of girl who gravitates toward confident people because she wants to absorb something from them. She’s drawn to the parts of you she secretly wishes she had — your ambition, your sense of direction, your ability to bounce back. She’ll praise those qualities while slowly resenting them. And because she doesn’t actually believe she deserves good things, she’ll convince herself you don’t deserve them either.

It’s a very Jessa energy:
I want what you have, but I also want you to think you don’t have anything at all.

Once you start paying attention, you notice the subtle digs, the weird tone shifts, the “be realistic” warnings delivered with a smile. You notice when someone only feels empowered if you’re insecure. You notice how quickly they become irritated when something finally works out for you.

And maybe Hannah’s biggest lesson — the one I didn’t understand at fifteen — is that not every friend you love is capable of loving you in the same way. Some girls need you to stay small so they can feel big. Some girls only understand intimacy through competition. Some girls can’t be happy for you because they think your happiness is an attack on their identity.

My favorite scene in the show is when Jessa attempts to reconnect with Hannah after finding out she’s pregnant. Hannah finally tells Jessa she doesn’t really care about her anymore. Jessa tearfully exclaims she can’t just cut her out. Hannah shrugs.

It’s funny how people finally show up once you’re done being devalued.

What I’m learning in my mid-twenties is that it’s not my job to convince anyone I’m worthy of basic respect. I don’t need to audition for friendship, and I don’t need to shrink so someone else can feel comfortable standing next to me. I can love people and still walk away once I realize their affection is conditional. I don’t have to wait around to be chosen. I can choose myself and let the rest fall away. Some endings aren’t betrayals — they’re clarity.

Editor’s Note -

Update: 9/2/25 11:44 P.M.

Rereading this now, I see how it comes across as cruel. My intention has always been to lay bare my personal truth — the irony of being me. The aggression, the frustration, it’s all directed at myself.

I use social media for a break. I want to see babies laughing and cats flying through tech-beat space, I want to see my daily Coop on the Stoop update — not my worst fear reflected back at me. It’s unhelpful to stumble across a thirty-something woman being fatalistic about her love life. Because then I spiral: maybe it won’t get better for me. Maybe I won’t ever meet someone who loves me. Maybe everyone else will leave. And how can I live with that?

Mind you, it’ll be Tuesday morning and I have to be at work in twenty minutes. Day-to-day is already hard enough. I want to be happy for my friends. I don’t want to absorb this chaotic way of being and then it spills all over everyone else. I also don’t want to read thousands of comments of lonely people stating that they don’t think they are worthy of love.

I believe I am worthy. I am training myself every day to believe this as fact.

What I cannot handle and will not feed into is self-hatred. When I wrote this, I was so so so frustrated and angry. How dare these women absorb my feed with Tik Tok after Tik Tok of them falling into despair? I realize now that triggered me so bad because that’s exactly how I feel. And someone was holding up a mirror and I didn’t like what I saw.

I wanted to post this again because I believe in the truth. I believe in accepting how I feel; negative and positive. I also realize this is the second time I’ve written a post like this and rewrote and added. I’m not perfect, unfortunately. But I am a human being. That’s all, my friends <3

Update 11/24 12:30 A.M

I was basically guilt-tripped into deleting this. I’m reposting it finally.

If I see one more woman sobbing because she is single, I am going to lose the little patience I have left.

Every day during my mindless scroll time, I come across a woman in her mid-to-late 20s hysterical that she doesn’t have a boyfriend. And then there are women in the comments stoking the flames of her misery.

It always begins with: I am no one’s priority. Who am I going to share moments of my life with?

I find this behavior and this language deplorable.

You have family. Friends. Yourself.

you’re not unworthy just because you’re single

I’ve accepted that I will never experience romantic love. What are we talking about right now?

You decided that because you choose not to actively date, you are completely unworthy and unlovable. Right. I can’t accept that. I can’t accept that there isn’t a lid for every pot. I can’t accept the idea that some stranger on the internet isn’t deserving of love.

I want to grab all of these lonely women by the shoulders and shake them. I want to tell them they are depressed and should seek medical help. I want to tell them that if they truly loved themselves, they wouldn’t be boohooing on the internet.

the cult of being chosen

You preach community and sisterhood, but none of you actually want it. You want your knight to come save you from the misery of being you. You don’t want to improve yourself. You don’t want to accomplish your goals. You don’t want to be a person. You want to belong to someone. You want someone to think for you and make moves for you. You want to take care of someone.

And that’s all fine and dandy—if some women would just admit it.

A lot of you do, in fact, need to get a man and go inside the house. And that’s FINE!

But I’m in enemy territory - get me with the adults, please!

romance your friends

To sit and whine about being single and “having no one” is the biggest fuck you to the people in your life. You have family and friends who would love to hear from you.

Besides physical intimacy, there is not a single thing you do with a boyfriend that you can’t do with a friend. You can romance your friends. Once we accept this as fact, a lot of people would realize a partner doesn’t make them special. You didn’t unlock some cheat code. You’re not a better person or a “real adult.” You’re just partnered.

The people in my life are not people who date. They’re just individuals who happen to have boyfriends. Someone shows interest, they decide they want a boyfriend, and that’s that. They don’t try new people out, they don’t explore, they don’t get to know themselves in the process. It’s a subconscious way of avoiding risk and rejection. Why would you want to be someone that lacks courage?

They just fall into these long-term situations that drag them farther from themselves. And when it fails, suddenly they need a friend again.

get a grip

I’m so sick and tired of those that refuse to let go and make everyone else suffer for it in the process. I do not subscribe to the scarcity mindset of the masses. People come and go, but I’m with me until the day I die.

I understand the duality of man, but a lot of women need to get a fucking grip. You can love someone—you should even crave it. But the primary recipient should be yourself.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

You have to surrender. Accept defeat. Only then will you end up where you are meant to be.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to be perfect.

Today, I think I finally understood what this poem means to me. We read and hear things and they make sense, but we never fully absorb the message. Whenever I have a hard day or I’m going to do something scary for the first time, I remind myself: You do not have to be good.

I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to be attractive. I just have to be me.

It is important to establish this as a permanent thought. When I feel myself spiraling, I pause and remind myself — there’s no one I need to impress. I don’t need to justify my existence or prove I’m worthy.

You deserve to be loved simply for being you. You do not have to perform or be “good” to get it.

This calms my anxiety-ridden brain.

I made a mistake. My first instinct is to nail myself to the cross, so to speak, and set myself ablaze. Who am I if I’m not constantly apologizing?

I grew up in a home where mistakes were met with intense shame and the silent treatment. I would be berated and then promptly ignored. I was criticized for doing things and not doing them well enough. This gave me an intense fear of failure.

I would repent and apologize. I would beg for forgiveness. It was implied that my emotions were an inconvenience and that, at minimum, I was an annoyance.

When I make a mistake, I spiral into panic mode. Will they be mad at me forever? Can I fix it? Do they hate me? Am I bad? I deserve whatever punishment they decide. As an adult, I acknowledge the drama of the thought. But my nervous system is constantly activated with this pressure to be good. Because if you’re not good, you will be alone.

I was twelve when I became friendly with humiliation. The boy I liked told me, in front of everyone, “That’s why you’re fat and don’t have a boyfriend.”

And I remember the utter horror I felt. It felt like silence stretched around me and warped itself. My stomach dropped and I felt everyone’s eyes on me. I felt such shame. How dare I think it was any different? Didn’t you know to be fat was to be ugly?

I have had plenty of crushes. Every single time, they just “didn’t like me.” I’ve had friends date them. Or flirt with them. A pattern formed and the message was clear — I wasn’t good enough.

I did try. I didn’t give up hope. I told guys how I felt. And I was denied again and again. It was an equation I couldn’t solve. Oddly, rejection therapy worked in reverse. It just seemed to pull me inward.

The desire eventually fizzled into nothing. I decided that I should learn to be comfortable with the idea of a life alone.

I wasn’t sure what I had done or why I was being punished. My parents withheld affection from me. I floated through life on the fringe of friend groups. Boys didn’t even want me. Why was I cursed? If someone would tell me what was wrong with me, then I could fix it.

At twenty-five, I still feel this way sometimes. I don’t know who or what I belong to. I want to belong to myself. I want to find a community.

Everyone I love will get married and expand their families, and I’ll live a great life — but it will be solitary. I’ll travel, but I’ll do it alone. I’ll try new restaurants and attend concerts by myself. And I’ll send it to people or post it to Facebook. Or I’ll convince myself no one cares anyway, so there’s no reason to share.

And I want to believe that this won’t bother me, but it will. I think I crave companionship because I’m deathly afraid of being forgotten. I’m proud of my life and of myself. I live. But I know no one cares for the career woman. We eventually stop celebrating her milestones. Culturally, it’s just not something of value. Children. Marriage. Those are the celebratory markers of adulthood. When you don’t meet those milestones — am I really a woman? Am I truly an adult? I’m still looking for the answer.

What I do have an answer for: everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone. Appearance should not be a factor. Body count should not be a factor. You don’t need to be anything to receive that love.

You do not deserve to be humiliated for expressing your desire. I know we exist in a world that places thinness and whiteness at the top of the hierarchy. What destroys me are the women that refuse to unlearn this ideal because they benefit from it.

The women that were supposed to love me and care for me going out of their way to remind me of my perceived place — that is soul-crushing. I never cared about a crush. I cared that I was shamed for daring to take up space, especially by women who knew exactly how my pain felt.

Every day, I do my best to make peace with the future. I don’t want to miss out on my life just because I have to do it by myself. I have found the strength needed for it to no longer bother me.

I’ll never stop sharing myself with the world. Sharing my voice. I deserve to be here. I’m not explaining that or building a case to prove it anymore.

I don’t disappear because someone, anyone, denies me love.

I won’t.

I heard a phrase this past week — “The Suffering Contract.” A woman on TikTok, hidden behind a pair of cool sunglasses, broke it down. And it got me thinking:

What do we agree to suffer through? What suffering contract have I signed on the dotted line?

There’s a version of all of us that we agree to be. Whether by choice or by design, I agreed to be The Good and Quiet Daughter. The Fat and Funny Friend. The Eternally Single and Pure Woman.

I agreed not to let my light shine too bright. I dimmed myself so others could glow brighter. No one told me outright to do this — but it always felt implied. I sat on the sidelines of my own life, waiting for someone to pat me on the head and say: good job, I love you.

The Good and Quiet Daughter

It’s hard to build your life when you don’t have role models. I had plenty of women I didn’t want to be like, but almost none I wanted to follow.

The eldest daughter is her mother’s foot soldier. I took care of my siblings. Cleaned the house. Did laundry. Listened to my mother. Protected her. Protected them.

I was quiet. I was good. And still didn’t feel like it was enough.

The first time I questioned The Suffering Contract, I was fourteen. I asked my mother why I had to suffer because of her choice of partner. Why must my life be hard? What did I do?

Every time I tried to tear up the contract, I was met with ridicule and abuse — reminders that I had no choice. Those who suffer the hardest are somehow the strongest.

The Fat and Funny Friend

I never felt pretty. I often felt too manly. Aggressive.

The shame I carried as The Good and Quiet Daughter followed me into the schoolyard. The girls were thin. They knew how to dress. How to do their makeup.

I wore Plato’s Closet. Washed my hair with Suave because my mom couldn’t afford to buy the $7 shampoo.

The male attention I did get was split down the middle: some thought I was funny, others just wanted sex.

I didn’t lose weight until I was twenty-three. Until then, I spent years sobbing, wondering what made me so repulsive. I blamed fate. A cruel joke. Anything. I wondered why God seemed to skip me. He gave everyone else something that made them worthy of love except for me.

The truth? Fatness is a paradox. On one hand, you’re invisible. On the other hand, you’re hyper-visible depending on how much space you dare to take up. And people never let you forget either.

And the truth is - you deserve to be loved as you are. My weight wasn’t the issue because I always had offers. How I felt about myself was holding me back.

The Eternal Bachelorette

No one told me I had to be alone. It just felt implied.

In some ways, it was a choice. I knew I had problems. I knew I needed to work on them. I never wanted to dump them on a partner and sort myself out through their love. I wanted to be whole enough to love someone fully.

A friend dated the guy I liked. After it happened a handful of times, it began to feel like it was intentional.

How dare I command attention? I was overweight. They were prettier. Thinner. Smarter. Maybe they felt they deserved it more.

For a long time, I took pride in my suffering. I’ve never had a boyfriend. I have a fractured relationship with my mother. I’m a bitch, I’m a lover. Or whatever Meredith Brooks said.

This combination of social denial and self-hatred morphed into this odd ball of righteousness. It’s fine. I never wanted it anyway. I’m better than all of you because I possess self-control. What’s that saying? The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math.

Breaking the Contract

As I get older, I realize you don’t get points for suffering the most. There’s no reward for martyrdom.

Suffering doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t earn you love. It just leaves you tired and bitter while everyone else lives their life. To almost everyone but you, it reads as manipulation. Entitlement, even. And that’s not kind.

I thought if I stayed quiet, funny, single, invisible — someone would eventually notice. Like there was a prize for being the most patient. Spoiler: there isn’t.

All suffering ever gave me was more suffering. More fine print. More rules. More contracts I never agreed to.

I’m tired of waiting and thinking and processing. Always think before you act; you can’t make a mistake. I want action. I want movement. I want the future.

Being raised by hyper-religious Gen X that were raised by boomers, The Suffering Contract was practically inherited. I think it’s time to leave it in the past, though.

It’s not my job to comfort the insecure or to shrink myself. I am bold. Brave. Courageous. Beautiful.

It’s easier to accept suffering, to agree to it. This is my predetermined role by some mythical, cosmic force. I have agreed to suffer in my waking life, and perhaps in the afterlife, I’ll get seated in SECTION 105 ROW 4 SEAT 3 instead of the nosebleeds.

It’s easy to believe that I’m ugly, fat, stupid, smart, funny, loud, annoying, useless, sensitive, selfish…

And view these traits through the lens of shame rather than as human.

Everyone deserves happiness. Everyone. Including you. And especially me.

It’s never too late to go and find it.

I’ve mentioned this before but lately, it feels as though I’ve forgotten.

You don’t get a reward for suffering the most. Or the longest. Or the hardest.

By that, I mean, the big cosmic entity in the sky isn’t going to reward you for suffering the most out of everyone. You don’t get a better seat in heaven above the normies. You don’t get a gold star that says “#1 Abstainer!”

You just suffer. And you suffer now, in the present.

I have always been a good noodle. In elementary school, I took home awards for Caring or Kindness or Respect as a result of our “Character Counts” award ceremony. In fact, the only compliant I ever got from a teacher was that I talked entirely too much.

As school marched on toward high school graduation, I made decent grades. I could have made better grades if someone cared enough to remind me to try harder.

I was so far removed from trouble that a security guard asked me if I was a freshman (I was a senior and he saw me every single day).

Academia is the only way I understood to receive approval. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. In my mind, that behavior was reserved for burnouts and losers. People that wouldn’t attend college or would be a homeless bum. I looked down on teenagers that had fun. I had filed fun away under the “for later” category.

I’ll smoke weed for the first time later. I’ll drink for the first time later. When I had “made” it and had piles of money and a big house. Odd how this justification worked in my brain. Later meant I had everything to lose. So why not enjoy the now?

Raised by religious Boomer grandparents and Gen X parents, I was taught that suffering is inherent. You must suffer for it is your responsibility. The eldest child doesn’t get to be happy, make mistakes or experience joy. They shoulder the burden for everyone else to enjoy their lives. Which sounds ridiculously similar to coping.

I’ve always been deeply fascinated by the religious. I believe in God, but I don’t believe in the God many seem to. I believe in a loving and accepting God that does not judge based on whatever man-made -ism we subscribe to.

I believe in heaven, but who knows? What if when you die there’s nothing? Then you lived your life in anguish for no reason. And you wasted it trying to please something that turned out to be a falsehood. I don’t want to be seen as good. I don’t want to be seen as a saint. I want to be seen as me and I want to be allowed to make mistakes too.

Religion gives those surviving purpose. If you live in poverty or spend your life working yourself to the bone, you may be prone to fantasizing about a peaceful afterlife. I’ve always imagined the afterlife as a wonderland of open fields and endless bounty. It’s probably a tad boring because all that’s left is eternity.

I spent a long part of my life just tolerating it. Or just hustling to the point of having a meltdown.

It’s why I latch onto strong, angry female leads. Furiosa got peace. Beatrix got her daughter. Katniss got her meadow. Even Amy got her twisted version of control. Maybe the real war of pleasure is about putting the weapon down and learning to live. It feels as though I’m in a season of transition. Anger is fun. It is fuel. But it’s so exhausting. It isn’t the whole story.

I take pride in my strength, my resilience. It’s been given to me by people I admire and love the most. It’s taught me how to survive until I knew I was safe. As I change into who I am supposed to be, there are a few tenets of adulthood I am coming to understand.

Trust. You must trust that you can take care of and protect yourself. I’ve done it all my life. There’s no reason to question it now.

Rest. You do not need to collapse in order to justify taking a break.

Joy. It is not a prize you unlock at the end of suffering. It’s in the small, daily acts of choosing yourself.

I don’t know what happens after we die. But I do know what happens if I keep waiting: nothing. I miss my chance. I lose the job opportunity. And then I resent the ones that weren’t as scared as me.

I don’t want to get to the conclusion of my life (if I’m lucky enough to see it coming) with a list titled Things I Would Like To Do Before I Kick The Bucket.

I don’t want a bucket list. I want a life. I want my pleasures and mistakes and small rebellions now, while I still have a body and a heartbeat and friends to call. I don’t need a gold star in heaven; I need a Tuesday afternoon that feels like mine. Maybe that’s what winning the war of pleasure actually looks like: not conquering anything at all, but finally allowing yourself to live.

What if this is heaven?

What if the open field is already under my feet, waiting for me to step in?

Introduction

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of a certain phrase spreading across TikTok, and it’s been driving me insane for weeks:

“You must love yourself before you can love another person.”

For some reason, this has young women in a tizzy. The go-to rebuttal is always: “No amount of self-love will replace romantic or platonic love.”

Which is true — but also completely misses the point.

No one is saying that loving yourself makes you immune to wanting connection. It’s human to crave closeness. What the phrase actually means is that you cannot love someone fully or correctly if all of your energy is poured into begging the universe to deliver them to you.

Correctly - being defined as without codependency. The universe is laughing with me as I type this out.

You cannot get what you want until you feel you are deserving of it. How can you love if you feel undeserving?

All of my relationships are codependent to an extent. I rely on everyone to regulate me emotionally. Suffering in isolation didn’t work either. It makes me depressed and allows a space for shame to fester.

We tell men this all the time, but women need to hear it too (myself included). You don’t get love by asking extra nicely.

Now, I’ve sobbed and boohooed and whined and begged about this in therapy.

Why, oh why, does it seem like I’m being subjected to some cosmic punishment? I reap so hard I’m not even sure what I sowed.

Perhaps I’m being handed some ancestral karma. Some man in my bloodline did a woman so dirty that she cursed his daughters for generations to come. I like to imagine this scenario because it is ridiculous and makes me laugh.

The Cultural Standstill

Anyway, what unsettles me most is this cultural standstill we’re in. Millions of people, chronically online, refuse to do the work — or even acknowledge that maybe we need to reframe how we talk about love in public forums. We discuss love under the guise of transaction, ‘we live in a what can you do for me’ culture.

It’s so me, me, me that we miss the point. You do have to inconvenience yourself for love and at best connection. Sometimes, you have to do it scared.

These Internet people don’t want to rewrite the rules, to admit that friendships are just as essential as romance. Instead, the focus is on squeezing into the system as it already exists.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that impulse, but it’s fascinating how quickly we give up rather than demanding more of each other.

Individualism and Disconnection

The irony is that American individualism — built on hustle, grind, and survival — has left us so disconnected that romance becomes the only “solution.” The working poor yearn for community and they don’t even realize it.

Never mind that thousands of unhappy couples post daily about being stuck in joyless long-term relationships. Married women make entire TikToks complaining about their partners not washing dishes or forgetting their birthday. This mythical dream partner may not solve your self-esteem issues. Just like losing weight didn’t solve mine. And trust me, I hate that those people were right.

The TikTok that triggered this whole rant even ended with a depressing admission: the creator doesn’t enjoy her own company and finds no fulfillment in herself.

That’s not just personal — that’s systemic. Pandemic isolation, yes, but also social media dependency.

Connection doesn’t magically fall from the sky, and people don’t anoint you as worthy of it just because you declare yourself so. If you decide you’re worth the effort and keep the promises you make to yourself, you open the door for others to meet you there.

The Uncomfortable Truths

• There’s nothing romance can do for you that you cannot do for yourself.

• You’re not “special” simply because you’re partnered.

But our culture inflates romance in the same way it inflates thinness.

Think about the panic over Ozempic: if everyone is thin, then who is “better”? If everyone has thigh gaps, where does hierarchy go?

The same logic applies to relationships. If everyone refuses to define themselves by romance, what happens to the system that thrives on comparison and scarcity?

From a sociological perspective, I find the concept of love and why we cling to it so fascinating. The r/Waiting_to_Wed subreddit is dedicated to THOUSANDS of people (mostly women) expressing their desire to marry after being with their partner for years. They hand out ultimatums, manipulate and concoct plans to get a proposal. Sometimes it works and most of the time it does not.

Reject the system. Reject capitalism. Seek peace.

My Reality

I don’t have the answers. There’s no quick fix for loneliness.

I spend every single day becoming friendly with my own. But I do my best to try and see the lesson in the fog. I do things that bring me joy and don’t wait around for my life to find me.

My life is happening now.

I’m here.

I’m here.

At the beginning of the summer, I shared with my therapist that a goal of mine was to reconnect my head to my body.

For a long time, I’ve floated like a detached head and watched my body function. I can describe to you how I feel. I can tell you why I do what I do. Why people act the way they act.
But I can’t tell you where I feel it in my body.

A TikTok user described it well: Idk I’m just the narrator and don’t ask me again.

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June

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been home from France. It sucks.

I feel out of step with almost everyone, but assumed it was just post-vacation depression.

It was my first time out of the country and my first time away from home. The time difference was kicking my ass.

My friends are both in committed relationships, and for a few weeks, I had a complex about it. You go from seeing each other every day, texting almost every second, to not seeing each other for weeks and texting every hour.

I feel like the obnoxious single person at a party who can’t take a hint to fuck off.

I can’t tell anyone about my trip because it feels like bragging.

I don’t want to make plans because it feels like begging.

I attempt to find comfort in my solitude, and I’m hit with a realization:

Life goes on without you.

Which is odd to me, because I came back.

I turn twenty-five. I’m stuck at work on my birthday this year. I make it a rule that everyone must tell me happy birthday — and they do.

My friends throw me a surprise party. I feel bad for whining about them in therapy earlier in the week. I realize now that it’s just me, and I shouldn’t punish everyone for my abandonment issues.

I wonder if this is the start of something.

I blink, and June is gone.

July

I spend the Fourth of July with my dad. We head to the movies, as we often do.

Before the movie starts, my dad tells me, I’m so glad we still get to do this together.

Every time I say goodbye to my dad, it makes a part of me sad. We live our lives together, but apart from one another. My parents divorced when I was six years old, and that distance has always been there.

I leave my dad to smoke a cigarette in his car. I watch him from my rearview mirror.

My therapist tells me I should start writing again.

I write Sacrifice Looks Better on Paper.

The rest kind of just spills out of me.

I confess about middle school and high school. About the boys who didn’t like me back but had no issue draining me emotionally. How it felt to be sixteen turning seventeen. The emptiness. The betrayal of best friends.

And how this eroded my trust in myself and in others. How I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly at all — but it has haunted my narrative for a decade.

I title it Girl on the Verge.

I decide that for me to be a true writer, I need to be honest. Honest with myself and my audience.

This act of writing has instilled a confidence in me. I’m learning to trust my brain again — to believe that I’m a decent writer. Strangers are telling me to keep going.

This feels good.

I start thinking about taking a solo trip somewhere so my passport isn’t collecting dust.

I set my sights on Portugal.

I sigh, and August arrives.

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August

This month feels akin to taking an afternoon nap and waking up before dinner with a pounding headache.

This August, I oddly feel more at peace.

I’ve been practicing a new rule: when you feel as though people are staring, dare to stare back.

This immediately calms my nervous system when I realize it’s just an old woman lifting 2lb dumbbells.

This rule has also given me the courage to look silly.

For a long time, I didn’t want to be perceived because I couldn’t control what people saw. I’m realizing now that I was thinking about myself way too much. No one cares. Why should I?

School is creeping up on me. So is the rest of my life. I feel as though I’m being pushed to make a move toward something… but I’m not sure what.

I want to get out of this town.

I think about turning thirty and eventually thirty-five. I wonder when I’ll decide to start a family. I wonder if I’ll ever be ready to be a wife (probably not).

I think about everyone else I know and how they decide on one person and stay put. I wonder if that’s who I am as well — and if I’m just fighting against my true nature.

September will be here soon. Portugal is calling.

We live in a hungry culture. Hungry for food, cheap gas, and ugly, inanimate objects that dangle from a Shein purse.

Capitalism has tricked us. Tricked me, even. It convinces us that this deep hunger can only be satiated by the art of spending. We tell ourselves we thrift because it’s cheap and ecological. We justify trips to Marshalls because discount shopping can’t be that bad.

There’s an entire demographic of women on TikTok who compete for the most disgusting and outrageous mukbang. Women buy pounds of food to solo devour, with a microphone clipped to their chest.

They eat in their cars, fry their Chipotle burritos in sugar, or dye them candy-apple red—all so you’ll like, comment, and follow. People spend $50 at Dunkin’ Donuts, buy enough food to feed their entire office floor, and gobble it up like a little piggy within twenty minutes.

But I don’t just watch these rituals—I’ve lived them.
My hunger didn’t go viral, but it shaped my entire early adulthood.

This greed highlights a pertinent issue: we are so full, yet so hungry at the same time.

My own personal relationship with gluttony stemmed from the black hole that used to reside inside me. I hated my life. I hated myself. It felt like my real life was waiting out there, somewhere—and I couldn’t figure out how to get to it.

I graduated high school, and I ate. And I ate. I ordered takeout constantly. I didn’t know how to cook. And I gained. Before I realized it, I had ballooned up to 312 pounds.

It took a long time for me to admit that when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t like what stared back. It wasn’t necessarily the weight—trust me, I didn’t even think I was that big. Rather, it was almost like my insides—my self-hatred, my shame—had all found their way to the external: my physical appearance.

If I wanted to change, I had to change my relationship with food. I sought out medical help, saw a dietitian, and changed my habits. I learned to exercise for the movement of it all—to get comfortable with experiencing myself and how I live inside my body.

But I was still hungry.

Not for food, per se—but that black hole still craved something. Validation. Time. Attention. I was no longer getting my dopamine hit from eating. I still needed more.

So I shopped. And I spent money I didn’t have. I collected CDs (still do, hehe). I bargain-shopped at Marshalls for things I didn’t need. Left Savers with bags full of clothes. Told myself I wanted to start a new project. Wanted to learn how to do my makeup. I found myself in Ulta. Sephora. Target. Ten dollars. Twenty dollars. Thirty. Swipe. Tap. Insert.

And when I would pull into my driveway, I would be filled with regret and drowning in excess.

Being chronically online only made my problem worse. But it made me think.

We cannot speed-build our lives through consumption. Generation Z seems to believe that if we buy cool, quirky things, we can absorb their powers—and they’ll reward us with a personality.

Clean girl. Cool girl. Grandpa-core. Coastal grandmother. Coastal granddaughter. Pilates princess. Mob wife-core. Coquette. Tomato girl. Sade girl. Labubu. Trinkets. Stanleys.

Who are you?

The missing puzzle piece to life is this: you must live your life to be considered cool.

You must travel. You must explore. You must buy the ugly refrigerator magnet on your trip. The keychain. The shirt.

You must exchange these things. Maybe lose them.
That is coolness.

We’re hungry for meaning. For self-worth. Mukbangs are just a response to late-stage capitalism. Most of us can’t justify a $50 Stanley Cup purchase—but we can make sense of a $50 meal from McDonald’s.

Addictions don’t always present as some debilitating illness—and that’s how we sometimes get so lost in them. We believe that if we buy the Stanley Cup or the Labubu, it’s a signal of status. A signifier of wealth. A shortcut to being perceived the way we want to be.

And maybe that’s what we’re really consuming—not the thing itself, but the hopeful possibility of a self.

Welcome back to Woman on the Cusp, where I write about that weird, messy space between who I used to be and who I’m trying to become.

Lately, I can’t stop repeating this quote to anyone who will listen:

“No matter where you go, there you are.”

As someone who has spent a decade in therapy, I find that to be true. It’s such a simple concept. You can’t outrun yourself.

You can’t chase love for validation. Can’t travel around the world to escape yourself. When you turn around, it’s just you, staring back.

That’s why I’ve always wanted love. But deep down, I knew I wasn’t ready to receive it. I’ve been too mean, too harsh, too unkind to myself. I’m still struggling with the concept of unconditional love—the idea that I deserve to be loved simply for being me.

Love isn’t something you earn by being perfect. It’s something you get by choosing to actively pursue it. And this concept applies to every relationship in my life.

I actively choose to wake up and love my friends every day. I text them back. Pay for their coffee. Work out together. Watch movies. Sit close and giggle at the stupid shit I whisper during quiet scenes in a movie. To me, that is love. That is intimacy.

So why must we peacock ourselves for romance?

People talk about “spending their lives” with someone—but the pursuit of romance often makes us insecure. Why? There’s so much overlap between romance and friendship. Friends get our true selves. Lovers get some made-up fantasy. And over time, they discover the truth.

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We put romance through a series of tests to see if we’re worth it.

This is why I believe almost everyone I know is settling. Or compromising.

Fundamental life differences. Political divides. Opposing love languages.

All up for debate—because we live and die by the belief that we can train someone to love us properly.

I call bullshit.

It’s all just smoke.

And if we let it clear, we return to the same idea:

“No matter where you go, there you are.”

That’s partly why love never seemed good enough for me. It always felt like slapping a Band-Aid over a wound that needed stitches.

My avoidance is just me, running into myself over and over again.

If I intellectualize love, maybe it will make sense.

If I ruminate on why it hasn’t come for me, maybe I can fix what’s wrong with me.

That kind of thinking is easier than responsibility.

It’s easier to feel like a victim of some unknown, cosmic force than to admit the truth: I’m scared.

I’m not scared of being unloved.

I’m scared of someone actually loving me back.

My therapist always told me I wasn’t open to receiving love. And I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that she was probably right.

I hardly ever went out.

I didn’t dress like I wanted to be seen.

Avoided conversations I couldn’t control.

Didn’t wear makeup.

Didn’t take care of my body.

Didn’t join clubs in undergrad.

Didn’t talk to my classmates.

I wanted to be left alone for a very long time—because to me, I wasn’t perfect, and therefore I didn’t deserve basic human connection.

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One time, a guy in one of my classes emailed me to say he thought I was beautiful and wanted to get to know me.

It disgusted me so much that I lied and said I had a boyfriend.

Another time, I was walking into the science building, and a group of guys walked past me laughing, saying they would “still hit.”

I’ve gotten: Your eyes are so beautiful, you have a face poets write about.

And it’s all but disgusted me.

I only ever cared about—and obsessed over—the Mr. Nonchalant guys who would randomly decide today was the day we’d have a conversation. Mostly because I knew deep down they weren’t interested. But the idea of maybe kept my nervous system activated.

And I know that if I were to meet the love of my life right now, I’d ruin it.

I would sabotage it, and the relationship would crash and burn.

I’d test the hell out of him. And when he finally left, I’d say, See? I knew you didn’t really love me.

That’s not the kind of love I want to experience. That’s not something I want to dump onto another person. Because people do not exist to fix us.

I can’t lock myself away in a box until I decide now is the right time to emerge. I have to figure out how to let my life run parallel to the shadow work.

The healing.

The becoming.

🧃 If this resonated, share it with someone who thinks being single is a disease. Or hit reply and tell me what being alone taught you.

And if you're new here — welcome. Woman on the Cusp is a series where I unpack growth, womanhood, and the soft power of choosing yourself. Subscribe below to never miss a Monday.

I feel it’s not cool to like The Perks of Being a Wallflower anymore. But I’ve always loved the movie, and specifically this scene.

There’s so much beauty in being alive.

Lately, I find myself enjoying the really tiny, microscopic moments of existing in the day to day.

I love when I’m going for a walk—maybe for a coffee, maybe for fun. And I feel the warmth of the sun. The slight breeze. And maybe I feel kinda fat in my clothes that day, but I decide not to care.

I’m crossing the rainbow crosswalk in my hometown. I’m thinking about how lovely it is to live in a town that is so diverse.

An older woman or a man tells me they like my shoes. Or someone smiles and tells me to have a good day. Maybe they say Good morning.

And I think about how lovely it is to be awake at 7 A.M. on a Tuesday.

I get my coffee and, if I’m lucky, have a nice but brief conversation with someone in line. We discuss the weather and how we can’t wait for fall. They smile and say, Enjoy the rest of your day! I smile back.

I place my coffee order, and I wonder about the cashier. I wonder if she’s just home for summer break. If she’s in school. If she’s happy.

I sip my coffee and wonder about the people around me. Where they’re going. What their evenings look like. Do they like their jobs? I hope they do.

I unlock my car door and smile. I have one that is new to me, but I’m so blessed to have it. And I’m so blessed to have a family that thinks of me in this way.

I turn the radio on. I crank the air conditioning, or I roll the windows down. I put on a song I can’t get out of my head recently—

Punkrocker by Teddybears ft. Iggy Pop.

And I blast it.

I tap my fingers on the steering wheel. I sing along horribly.

And I’m overcome with emotion. I begin to cry.

I cry from the simplicity of the moment. I cry out of sheer joy. I cry from how cinematic the moment feels.

Because I can say, Wow. I had a really wonderful day today.

This evening, I’ll take myself to a movie I’ve been dying to see. And I’ll get myself my popcorn and my drink. I’ll sit in my empty row and enjoy my movie.

And when I leave I’ll ponder the lives of the staff and other filmgoers. I’ll aim for a reasonable bedtime so I’m not up all night.

Because a day like this reminds me that my loneliness is too small for the rest of the world. And when I expand my life, it has no place to stay.

Welcome back to Woman on the Cusp, where I write about that weird, messy space between who I used to be and who I’m trying to become.

Today’s essay is about solitude — not in the "romantic trip to Paris" way, but in the “I went to CVS alone and had a great time” way. It’s about learning to enjoy your own company, watching other people spiral without it, and realizing you don’t need a boyfriend to feel alive.

Recently, I’ve come to a shocking conclusion: I enjoy being alone. I enjoy sitting alone. Driving alone. Going to the movies alone. I enjoy silence and listening to the sounds around me.

I’ll grocery shop alone, go to the gym solo, run to CVS by myself.

And yet, as a full-time chatterbox, I do still enjoy having someone to talk at occasionally.

But here’s what I’ve realized lately — some people absolutely loathe the idea of solitude. They physically cannot stand the thought of spending even a specific amount of time by themselves.

Some are more overt about it, which I can respect. If you need constant companionship, by all means, own that.

What fascinates me are the ones who won’t admit it. The ones who lie in bed all day. Who have no individual goals. Who Instacart and Amazon everything to avoid basic human interaction. They don’t take walks. Don’t look around or make eye contact with strangers.

But then — miraculously — they meet the love of their life, and suddenly their world blooms into technicolor.

I was raised by someone where — for them — nothing was ever good enough. Not a person, not a situation, not even themselves. They always needed more. They couldn’t be alone because it was unbearable.

And as a result, I spent my childhood watching a deeply unhappy woman try and fix herself using external love. I’ve watched screaming matches, bottles thrown across rooms, and fist fights. I’ve dealt with emotional and occasional verbal abuse.

This manifested as an avoidant streak. As I’ve said before, I spent years trying for love. And maybe God knew it wasn’t the correct time to give it to me.

Any time anyone shows direct interest, I dodge it. And I’ve supplied explanations for this phenomenon before. It’s scary. It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s uncharted territory. It’s never “Well, of course,” but always, “Well, why?”

Solitude — or frequent singleness, as the white women on TikTok call it — is an opportunity. A true time for reflection. Pondering. I think about how beautiful life is and how lucky I am to experience it. How I could get on a plane tomorrow and not ask for permission from my boyfriend.

It seems to me that everyone I know defines themselves by their perceived external value. Which isn’t awful — until it falls apart on you.

Part of me enjoys solitude so much because no one can hurt me here. And it gives me the opportunity to just be.

It’s also given me the attitude that if someone chooses to know me — well, sorry, you get all of me.

In terms of male company, I don’t care if you like me. If you think I’m too loud, ugly, or too fat. I frankly don’t care to hear a male opinion on anything, actually. Because I refuse to give anyone power over me, myself, and I.

People can choose to do what they like, and I can’t control that. If you choose to not like me, that’s all you. And I can choose not to care.

Single, partnered, or something in between — the world continues to spin.

I watched a TikTok earlier of a woman who got dumped after a six-year relationship. Rightfully, she was devastated. Her entire life got turned inside out in a matter of minutes.

Now, what I do begin to giggle at was this woman claiming she “won’t make it through this” and “she thinks she’s gonna die” while hysterically sobbing.

And I laugh because, again, the sheer thought of being alone is too much for some people! God forbid this lady had to spend an hour pondering the thought of finally having her life back.

Singleness allows me to have this space. Men want you to be their mommy — and respectfully, I don’t have the time for it. What I desire is companionship. But even that is not necessary at this current juncture of my life.

I’ve never desired to belong to a specific person because I’ve seen what it gets the people in my life.

The most important relationship in my life is the one with myself. I want to find a community. I want people to be happy to see me and to think about me when I’m not there. I want to spread kindness and joy wherever I go.

Because that is what life is truly about.

It’s not dumping your emotional needs on another individual and praying that they fix them for you.

You are responsible for yourself and your own life.

Sorry to break it to you.

🧃 If this resonated, share it with someone who thinks being single is a disease. Or hit reply and tell me what being alone taught you.

And if you're new here — welcome. Woman on the Cusp is a series where I unpack growth, womanhood, and the soft power of choosing yourself. Subscribe below to never miss a Monday.