It’s mid-November. The stakes are higher.
Once again, it’s time to form a jealous, disassociated grimace at your grandmother’s antique porcelain chicken salt shaker as another member of your family explains the origin story of how she met her “soulmate” at the family Thanksgiving meal.
The meal is immediately followed by a short, excruciating spell of conversational silence. I’m next; I can feel it. I defeatedly stir my mashed potatoes and mentally choose between the toss-up of “I’m too busy for a relationship, ha-ha MEN, right?” and “I don’t think I’m capable of love.”
“How about you, Madi, any guys?”
Twelve months, 365 days, three failed talking stages, and I have nothing to show for it. This question was the final project that my professor informed me of at the beginning of the semester to prepare for, and I failed miserably every time.
“Awe, that’s okay,” my grandma says, “The perfect guy will come along.”
That phrase has become the most calculated and paralyzing insult that a human being could ever say to me. My grandma feels terrible about bringing up the conversation due to my history with unrequited love. I feel terrible for existing. No one in the room wanted that phrase to be said, but here we are, all with a half-eaten slice of pumpkin pie, my mom waiting to bring up how much she doesn’t like my ex, and relentless, uncomfortable tension.
This past week, my holiday desperation got the best of me. The date that my family is coming to visit is set in stone, and I can feel the suffocating weight of pity and forced consolidation towards my adult singleness.
So, as any troubled single individual would do, I bluntly texted a man without context at 10:11 p.m. “Are we gonna date or not?”
It was 24 hours after not getting a response from the flabbergasted man when I realized that, maybe, I acted out of haste. My text should’ve said, “Can you refrain from dating me, but please just come to Thanksgiving, so my family thinks I’m in a happy relationship?”
I am 20 years old, and I am sick of the expectation that I place on myself. I am the only single individual in my family, but I have realized that being single during this season is beneficial, despite the crippling humiliation.
For starters, being single around the holidays saves you the embarrassment when you break up. I had had a significant other on Thanksgiving before. Still, I had so little hope in him actually sticking around that when my family asked if they would see him four weeks later at Christmas, I bluntly replied, “Probably not.” Then I turned my head back to the Thanksgiving Day National Dog Show.
Last year, I was broken up with four days before Christmas — a very humbling experience. I’m pretty sure that I got a couple of extra presents because of it, which was another plus.
You also don’t have to buy any presents if you swear off dating, arguably the worst activity known to man or woman. I am terrible at giving presents, and the fact that I am obligated to put thought into gifts rather than buy a $20 Buffalo Wild Wings gift card infuriates me.
I have also learned a life lesson that once I buy a man a present, he leaves. So, virtually, I will never buy a man a gift again. I usually end up spending around $50, and then there I am, left with a salmon-colored, frat boy button-up and a maroon hoodie accompanied by a LUSH bath bomb (I was happy to keep the bath bomb, it smelled like birthday cake).
Also, remaining single through the holiday season keeps memories from being ruined. Not once do I think of Christmas and not associate the “holly jolly” holiday without thinking of my past Christmas exes and the baggage they carried into it.
Nor, in the future, do I want the “no, one thing does not lead to another” and “yes, I saw her stuff at your house” conversations, which I have had, to take precedence over the sacred “most wonderful time of the year.”
So, stay single. Proudly be the cousin that has an overwhelmingly cold sense of loneliness to her presence. Deck the halls by yourself, so you won’t have to listen to him telling you where to put the decorations, reply an inaudible “mhm,” and then not listen to any of his input.
Spend time with your beloved family instead of with a mediocre man whose Christmas present to you was solely coming home from the Marine Corps to break up with you.
All of this to say, focus on yourself this season, but in the event where I refuse to take my own advice, I will need a plus-one for Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you’re interested, you can reach me by my Asbury email: madison.anderson@asbury.edu
