Recently I finished another course in my therapeutic writing training, and I found the exercises to be particularly deep and moving. For one of the exercises we had to make a list of intersections in our lives, moments when we chose to go in one direction and not another. Then we explored one of those intersections more in depth and wrote about the road not taken. The purpose was to see if there were any seeds of potential still waiting for us down that road. This exercise would likely have been too taxing for me a few years ago and triggered sadness and regret. Now it was mostly eye-opening and mind-bending to think about the chains of events that have led me to where I am today, and not to someplace else. Decisions beget decisions. If (important if) you can take the aerial view and scan your life with compassion, it’s exhilarating to contemplate this idea.
All this to say, I spent the past several weeks writing deeply about various aspects of my life. I didn’t realize how much relief it was giving me until one night as I got into bed. I tried to put my finger on what I was feeling, and then I realized. For the first time in my recollection, I felt completely at peace with being single. It was a physical sensation of letting go. I remembered a line in this book: “Letting go is something that happens to you.” I lay there and realized that in that moment I felt I had let go of any last vestiges of control I believed I have over getting myself married.
I once wrote that the creation of “‘shidduch crisis’ culture” was by masculine forces (I don’t just mean men). When being single is an unspeakably ghastly beast, we can’t stop fighting, can’t look at ourselves in the mirror without averting our eyes, can’t stop trying to control outcomes, to win.
What happens if we reach out and befriend the beast? And make peace with the reality that this is hard for many of us, and singlehood is a part of many people’s lives? What do we stand to lose? And to gain?
