The Greenness Of Your Grass

Chances are, you’re not going to be alone forever. You might joke about being a spinster—about getting cats with diamante collars or maybe an obnoxious Cockatoo you can teach dirty words—but inside you, somewhere deep in your bowel, nestled beneath your utmost fears and insecurities, there’s a little scrap of knowing that tells you that one day, somehow, you’ll have someone by your side. You might not be romantic about it. You might account for violent emotions, heartbreak or divorce, but you feel confident that there will be a time in your life, no matter how long or short, that you will share with another human being.

And yet you complain. You complain to me and to her and to everyone you know with frustratingly frivolous rhetoric, words like “I’m going to be alone forever.” These are words that you intrinsically know to be untrue, and yet you say them to us anyway. We tell ourselves to breathe—we remember the time we said these words, and we hate them, but we love you and we understand.

We turn to you with faces full of smiles and hands on your knee and we all say, in unison sometimes, “don’t worry, you’re wonderful, you won’t be alone.” We know that in days, weeks, months from now we will again be positioned just so, as you rail against your boyfriend, and our hands will rest as they rest now, very lightly upon your quivering knee, and we’ll say “don’t worry, you’re wonderful, maybe you should be alone?”

The fabled grass on the other side—I know you think it’s greener friend, but what I really want to tell you is that if you just take a moment to indulge in your surroundings, you will be awed. The lush emerald glow will reflect upon you, and your clawing desperation to cross to the other side will fade to a memory as you become content where you are.

So you’re alone now? You feel like it’s the end of days but it’s not—it’s your time, which is just as marvelous as shared time. Slow down. Spend as much time as you like with your friends. Spend your nights dancing with the girls or your days playing cricket with the boys. Make the decision to do these things unburdened by any other commitments. Your commitment is to you.

Speaking of you—start spending more time with you. Laugh at your own jokes. Luxuriate in solitary silence. Walk. Read. Pamper yourself. Be as filthy and disgusting as you please. Learn the comfort of your own embrace. It’s a cliché but it’s true—you will love better once you’ve fallen in love with you. Sleep sprawled on the bed. Snore. When you wake up make eggs and bacon and eat them in bed on your own. Find things—big and small—that you love doing and do them everyday.

Focus on your job. Find a hobby. Do whatever the hell you want. Because when that day comes—the secret day you hold onto in the hidden recesses of your guts—you will have to compromise. You will have to think of someone else whenever you make a decision. You will have to share your bacon, and maybe they wont like it crispy besides, and you’ll have to adapt. You will have to sleep wedged between someone’s limbs. It wont be better and it wont be worse; it will be different, and you’ll have to learn to love it too.