A Road Less Travelled

A while ago I wrote a post about telling vomit stories, but in the post I mentioned how I was annoyed that everything in my life seems to revolve around being single as if my marital status was a strange, bright sun. I think I’ve got a bead on why I’m in this orbit. Simply put, in my eyes being single is a negative and not a positive. And I don’t mean in terms of good thing versus bad thing. I mean plus thing versus minus thing.

If you are married then you’re married. If you’re single then you’re not married. In my head I don’t think of myself as ’single’. I think of myself as ‘not married’. As soon as I figured this out (or rather had it pointed out) then it made perfect sense why my world revolves around this fact. It is easy to build your life around what you are not. If you see yourself primarily in terms of what you are not then that’s what you build your life around.

I think very comparatively. I am a outgoing person, an extrovert, for better or worse I am a people person. So I tend to think of myself in terms of other people. The first time I started thinking I might be good at writing is when I, in all charity, noticed I was better than someone else. Most of my gifts and abilities involve communication and other people. Well, the bulk of the other people around me are married. They are first Christians and then they are married. We have the first thing in common, but as soon as I get to the very next thing there is difference between us. I am in a serious minority and I know it. All of my siblings are married, most of my friends are married. I have a few single friends, but I think one of the first ties forged with each of these friends is the hope that we could all be single together. My social circle revolves around married people and families.

I recently read a book called Quest For the High Places by Natalie Nyquist. Actually I read it twice. It was a very helpful book and I would recommend it. What might have been the most helpful thought was actually almost a throw away sentence. The sentence went something like “It is very hard to be single in a married world.” This was the first time I’d noticed how very married my world is. I am surrounded by married people who want other people to be happy like they are. I walk in a world that values marriage and assumes that most people will get married. It is the next step in my life according to all I’ve read, seen, heard, thought. I haven’t taken that step yet so I can’t join the majority elite. I am less in this world I live in. Being single doesn’t mean I am something; it means I’m not.

And it doesn’t help that I really want to get married. I mean, it easy to blow off feeling excluded if you don’t really care. It’s not that big of a deal to be denied entrance into the Cod Liver Oil Every Day Club. It might actually be something of a relief. But I want to get married. I want to join all the people who are normal in our circle. I want to stop being a ‘not’.

I think at this point the thing I need to change is my assumptions. There’s really not much I can do about getting married right now and I need to change something. But assumptions are a royal pain in uncomfortable places to change because they’re not anything you think; they’re things you assume without thinking. But I might be able to shift myself away to a new sun if I start seeing single as plus and not a minus. I mean, it’s not as if I like being stuck in this orbit. I would love to get a place where I can tell vomit stories without it having anything to do with being married or not. It’s certainly nice to have a goal.