This Is What It Means To Be Truly Single

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be truly single? This experience comes from someone who was almost always in relationships. For some people, being single is associated with the failure of finding The One. It isn’t. Instead, it’s experiencing one’s individuality to its fullest.

‪‪I don’t think we should associate our life’s happy ending with “finding The One” or perceive that we have reached the full arc of our life’s development when we find our soulmate. It’s not that it’s bad. Even I have done this, because finding The One or thinking we have found The One is one of the most magical things that can happen in a person’s life. It’s finding something most people search for their whole lives but never find. However, I realized, every person’s TRUE happy ending should instead be confined within reasons grounded upon one’s independent completeness and fulfilment of the self. Then finding one’s soulmate becomes a great beautiful addition to a person’s happiness, but the absence of it is not a reduction to a person’s joy.

So what does it mean to be truly single?

Being single is a state free from association. For me, it is when all of my mind, heart, and energy are undivided and poured into things I’m good at. It’s comforting. It’s like living in my own world, where I am safe and secure, independent from the things that may hurt me.

Most days it’s exhilarating. The freedom beams in technicolor through parties, travels, and time spent with friends. It’s living moment after crazy moment that I’ll remember when I’m too old and too boring for parties, sex, and cigarettes.

But it’s also peace in the simple moments of solitude. Moments like coming home alone and finding rest in your very own haven, reading a book alone at a cozy coffee shop, watching a movie by yourself, or even buying groceries on your own, captivated by the music in your ears as if you exist in your own little world. These moments are simple yet exhilarating.

Sometimes, though, in the silence of one’s own world, it gets lonely too. Sometimes it feels like everyone else is living their lives with someone while you live yours alone by yourself, and that’s okay. It’s okay to be lonely. Being single isn’t always happy; it isn’t always about the parties and the comforts of being alone. Apart from feeling the joy of solitude, occasional loneliness is a natural response to being alone, and one should not be ashamed of it. One should not deny it—one should actually embrace it.

Happiness is realized even more through the days you feel otherwise happy.

Happiness and loneliness, the good and the bad, luck and misfortune—these are part of life’s crazy balance of how it feels to truly live.