I Will Be Single Forever
Tags: Modern Love, Quarantine, Furlough, Online Dating, Being Single

When the news first came in that leadership was exploring lay-offs and/or furloughs in early April, one of my first thought was unfortunately, “Great! I’ll now have plenty of time on my hands to analyze all the reasons why I’m still single.”

I wouldn’t qualify myself as a career-driven person. I worked really hard to get where I got, suffering in too many menial jobs to want to count, working for people I didn’t respect at companies where I didn’t believe in the mission. So when I finally — FINALLY! — landed my dream job, I felt like I was set for life. I found myself thinking that I was in the job I would stay in until I was done working, whether that meant retirement-age, or when I wanted to have kids and would leave the workforce.

My job requires a lot of late nights. I work in theater after all, so eating dinner at my desk before watching a show was somewhat commonplace. I wasn’t worried about being single. I always figured that it would happen when it would happen, and that was that. Because my career was thriving, and it made me happy, and that was enough for me. A man will come along when the timing’s right.

I don’t believe in online dating. I hate texting. I am long-winded and sarcastic, and it is impossible for me to send the first thing that I type. I think that texting is just saying the most amount of stuff in the least amount of space, and that just isn’t me. One of my best friends recently wrote an all-caps response along the lines of “JEEZ WHY ARE YOU MAD AT ME” to what I thought was an innocuous message that I sent. If that’s the response I get from someone who is around me 45 hours a week, then I shudder to think what strangers will think of me.

After our project ended, one of my collaborators told me it took him awhile to understand my sarcasm and sense of humor. I looked at him, and went, “cool, so basically we’ve never had an actual conversation during the entirety of this show.” So much for relationship-building with colleagues…

So the idea of engaging with strangers, essentially through texting, is unappealing to say the least. And that to me is what online dating is. Plus games. And trying to make yourself sound and look better than what you are. I have never worn makeup because I am lazy, do you really think I’m going to spend time trying to paint myself in the best light?

I think I have the personality of someone who marries their high school sweetheart. I grew up in white suburbia, so it wasn’t too disappointing to not find my soulmate there. I went to a small liberal arts college, which also had a small population of Asian students. After graduating, people told me that I would meet someone through friends. That hasn’t panned out. I don’t drink alcohol, so I’m never at bars. I don’t drink coffee, so I’m never at a coffeeshop. I pack a sandwich for lunch every day, and I often bring in leftovers for dinner when I know that I’ll be in the office late. I do this because I’m frugal, but it also means that I have severely limited the potential interactions I can have with random strangers in a rom-com meet-cute. I’m a homebody, and love curling on the couch to watch TV. It brings me much joy, but means that I am never going to meet anyone.

So when we started working from home, I jokingly declared that I would be single forever. Thank you pandemic, for all but assuring that I will not meet anyone anytime soon! And then the days turned into weeks which turned into months, which turned into being furloughed, which meant that I stopped leaving my apartment, and spent all my time being unproductive.

I don’t know if it would be healthy for me to be dating right now. I don’t quite feel like myself. I hate to admit it, but I kind of don’t know who I am without work. I would have loved for someone to see me in my element, advocating for the artists that I so strongly believe in, my passion seeping through with every word I said. Instead, I am now consuming a bunch of art-less movies, cookie cutter love stories centered around white people stressing before the holidays (don’t worry, there’s always a Black best friend, so diversity!), who are all too dumb/stubborn/foolish to realize that their soulmate is right in front of them and has been the whole time!

I don’t know how to make that exist in a pandemic. I don’t know what meet-cute could possibly happen in my trip to the grocery store every two weeks.

So instead, I think about the missed connection I had over last year, and wonder what could have happened if I just said hi. And with nothing else to do, and with nowhere to go, it’s all I can think about. I have built this man up so much over the last few weeks, in a way that didn’t cross my mind in the immediate aftermath of locking eyes.

And that to me is what the pandemic has meant. The inability to connect. To find someone new. To find someone worthy. To fall in love. To dream of a future that is so much better than the now. So I will continue to sit alone in my apartment, regretting the smallest of things, wishing that I could go back and change it just so that I would have a little more love in my life.