Diary of a Chronically Single Girl

Dear Diary,

Recently, I was talking to a family member, and they asked me which I spend the most time thinking about: the past, the present, or the future. I’d never really thought about that before, although the answer came to me easily. At another point in my life, I might have answered differently.

As a little girl, I dreamed about my future constantly. I pictured having a boyfriend to hold my hand. I pictured my crush as an older man proposing to me by my favorite bench at the park near my house. I stuffed a pillow under my shirt and pictured what I would look like as a mother-to-be.

Then, for a long time, I didn’t have the capacity to focus on the future. My thoughts were consumed by dealing with the constant hum of anxiety. I worried all the time, to the point where I had little idea who I was outside of my fears.

By the time I learned to put a voice to my anxieties and found ways to handle them, I was nearly an adult. I fully embraced the present, filling my days with as many new experiences as I could. Of course, I kept hoping that one of those new experiences would include a boyfriend. It never did.

Nowadays, I find my mind wandering back into the past. I feel that to be single in your mid-twenties is to always be thinking about your place in the world and how you ended up where you are. I think about how I used to love High School Musical because I thought Zac Efron was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. I think about my senior trip, when I stood outside in the snow and told a boy that I liked him just for the thrill of it. I think about the boy I loved in college who never loved me back in the way I wanted him to.

I like to imagine past, present, and future as a kind of trinity. Three distinct persons but fully of one mind and being. In the moments when I tend to focus too heavily on one, the other is there to remind me of the big picture. So which do I think about the most? All three.

xo,

Chronically Single