After a while, ‘being single’ begins to feel less like a passing reference to your romantic status and more like an existential malaise - it is a sneaky, amorphous label that has a tendency to adopt new, worrying definitions (‘alone’/ ‘so alone’). As we drift and bob into the middle of our 20s ‘having a boyfriend’ has become a vague threat that I’m aware happens to other people sometimes; like bed bugs or fridge fires. At times being single can feel like being suspended in some deep ocean between two continents, having left the safety of familial shores in order to swim for new, unknown islands. Unfortunately, not every moment is engineered to serve as a gratifying reminder of the preciousness of this brief freedom. For every Saturday night spent acting like glorious trash with your glorious trash single mates, there’s a Sunday spent lying down in 3 week-old sheets as the light slowly fades from the window.
It can be feel precarious, it can feel strange, it can feel scary. So, in honor of January - the most grindingly unglamorous month of the year - we have compiled some tips for keeping single life purposeful and zingy in 2018.
Set aside one weekend every now and then to disappear into all those addictions you carefully hold at arms length - fags, Freddos, meth - whatever does it for you. No need for ‘concerned’ parties. You gat this.
Never let the company in your bed be less interesting than the books on your bedside table
Eat punnets of figs at the back of the cinema by yourself
Read some red-hot smut (at least one Jilly Cooper)
Have really good bed linen
Learn how to give up in style
Eat cheerios in the bath
Wear colour
Go to everything you’re invited to. And plenty you’re not.
Write love letters to yourself
Never save your best for special occasions
Be someone different for the evening
Keep something else alive
Revel in people not knowing where you are
Don’t be afraid of the long Sunday. Fill it.
Know your own body. Don’t sit in the dark waiting for someone else to discover it
Never despise yourself for wanting attention. We search for it as instinctively as sunflowers raising their faces in search of the sun.
Remember that others feel what you feel. The city is pulsing with it
Stay soft. Stay hopeful
Have single friends who make you laugh about the joys and miseries of dating
Invest in good socks
Don’t put pressure on an imaginary person to fix things - you have to be wired up correctly before someone can switch the light on
Treat your friends like lovers and your lovers like friends
Stop buying the cheapest of everything
Shut the front door sometimes not knowing when you’ll be back
Ride buses. Listen to other people’s problems.
Savour the silence
Let the radio whisper you to sleep
Go and sit in front of a painting
Dress for the unexpected
Get lots of great love advice from your uber drivers
Sleep in the middle of your bed. With five pillows
Have a favourite coffee shop
Never let go of the immutable truths you value about yourself
Reads lots of memoirs and diaries; learn about the different ways to live a life
Cherish and nurture an internal world - ‘le jardin secret’ - that no one knows about yet
Kiss incredibly unsuitable people. Kiss anyone who intrigues you.
Surprise yourself
Spend time with the very old and the very young to gain some perspective
Don’t overthink it
Written by Ditzy team
Illustrated by Jess Bird