GIVING UP ON THE HAPPY END

I’m pretty sure that’s what I have to do. I’ve been alone most of my adult life. Relationships have never come easy. Or rather they just never came. For whatever reason, as my female friends were blossoming and stepping out into the new, unknown landscape of love and sex and ‘togetherness’, I was left alone – no boys lining up to be my boyfriend. There were casual encounters, drunken coming togethers and the occasional foray into two weeks of domestic bliss, but the viability of actually having one another’s back, of getting to know the fears and hopes and dreams of the other person, of knowing *them*, that eluded me. And although I wanted it, although I was impressed with the casual ease with which my friends fell in love (and sometimes out) I was okay with that, and didn’t question too much why it wasn’t happening for me. It didn’t happen at school. It didn’t happen at university. It kind of happened at grad school, but that is a story for another time. It didn’t happen once I started working. And it still hasn’t happened. I stayed alone. And for the most part, thanks probably to a rather useful ability to deny or ignore the obvious, I always remained convinced that it would come. Better days would arrive and one day, soon, I would find a person who could love me. And because I was convinced this would happen, I wasn’t lonely. Until about a year ago. Then I got lonely. Cripplingly, excruciatingly, soul-crushingly lonely. And with it came the self-recriminations: I’m not loved because I’m not loveable, because I’m needy, because I’m ugly, because I’m selfish, because I’m fat and most of all, I must be really fucking stupid for not having put all this together before. And loneliness has made me more open, trying to create new relationships and friendships, but loneliness also makes me invest these new contacts with the weight of the world and my future happiness. And when, as inevitably happens, the reality doesn’t quite tally up with my imagined perfect happiness, the loneliness comes crushing back. Even more crippling, excruciating and soul-crushing than before, and with an added dollop of humiliation added to the mix. So I just have to convince myself to give up on the happy end. To free myself of the idea that life will get better. To accept that this is it and that this is okay. And then maybe I can learn to enjoy the loneliness and finally stop waiting for something that’s never going to happen.