Why are you single?
‘Why are you single?’
I often don’t know how to answer that myself. It’s not like I am going around asking them why they are in a relationship. Innocent acquaintance is one thing, but people who want me to feel insecure about it will come up to me and ask why I am single after forty. As if there is anything wrong with being single whatever age. Everybody is allowed to live however they wish, and personally, I am not against the idea of meeting someone to share my life with. I’ve come to realise that the common thread amongst these types are that they are unhappy in their own lives and they want to make other people feel bad so they can feel better about themselves. I am sure you have all come across that type. I pity them rather than get angry, although when I am feeling vulnerable, I admit it is hard not to let the negativity affect me. My state of being won’t change just because other people told me to and it is my choice how I react to this type of comment. My take is to provide an equally inane response, unless they are worth my time to discuss further. I might as well be playful and wind them up, right?
‘Too many boys, too little time.’
Everybody has a story you don’t share with just anyone, and it’s not always so black and white. Looking back, I have actually been in back to back long term relationships...until five years ago. I still remember that horrible evening on my way back home from a friend’s house warming party. It was not too late, being a warm Autumn evening, I decided to take a short cut through a park when a cocky young man wearing a baseball cap started following me. I was a little tipsy and high on sugar from chocolate wine paired with cupcakes. My judgements were impaired. Originally, he wanted to chat me up. When I ignored his advances and kept walking on, he became verbally aggressive. It got to a point, I was scared he might hurt me, I walked into a hotel nearby briefly so that he won’t follow me all the way to my flat. There was a kind security guard who ran outside to see if my follower was loitering. Thankfully, he was gone. After 15 minutes or so, I thought the guy must have got bored and run away, so I walked out of the hotel.
As I walked further away from the hotel, suddenly, I felt someone’s presence behind me, followed by ‘Yo, why did you ignore me!’ by my right ear.
I turned around and to my horror, that man in the cap had tiptoed behind me until I was close to my flat, where it is residential and fairly quiet, away from the main road. Later police found out he was hiding behind the bush until I came out of the hotel. He was smirking to see how shocked and scared I looked. ‘Why don’t you like me?’ he said. I tried to turn around and ran back to the same hotel, which by now was 5 minutes away, but at that flash moment, if he was not going to get anywhere sexually, he was going to get as much as he could from me and grabbed hold of my handbag and tried to yank it off my shoulder. I don’t care about the money, but in my handbag, I had a specially engraved pen that my boyfriend had given to me that I cherished more than anything before he left to Africa for work. My automatic reaction was to curl up and hold on to everything. He dragged me across the street by yanking on the strap of the handbag. I was just a piece of meat attached to the handbag. Although I was screaming for help, nobody came to help, because they didn’t want to get hurt themselves, and also because he was good looking, they apparently thought it was just domestic violence and wanted to stay out of. I was like a paper toy against this strong muscular man, and by this point after being pulled and mauled in all directions, my fitted jeans had come undone, baring my vulnerable flesh and crumpled down to my ankle, my top has rolled up with bra unclasped from the sheer force of this violent man, and the side of my body was by now covered in asphalt burns and blood from being dragged across rough surface of the road. I still have the faint black asphalt mark on the side of my body as a reminder, because small particles that crept under my skin couldn’t be washed off completely.
And I just so happened to be pregnant at that time. I lost the baby soon after that evening. Though my boyfriend came to see me in London following the ordeal, he had to leave immediately for work commitment. It was so hard for both of us, considering he had booked that week off work well in advance as it was supposed to be the week to make the happy announcement to our families of the pregnancy. We were meant to move in together when our baby was born. Life is so unfair sometimes. When I was going through this heartache alone in London, to make the situation even worse, my ex was kidnapped in Africa for ransom when he went back. You see really bad things happen to people in a film, but you don’t expect that to happen to you. He is fortunately still alive, and it is not even his fault, but you hear about stories how people change when they come back after being kidnapped, and he was never again the same confident optimistic fun loving man I fell in love with. The relationship took its natural course, and disintegrated.
When you go through something traumatic like being assaulted, losing your own child, and the end of a relationship, the natural defence mechanism is to stop feeling anything. I just couldn’t touch a man or let anyone near me for two years after that night. I was on autopilot, just to cope with simple daily life. It didn’t help that my beloved step-father had been diagnosed with schizophrenia around that time too. It was such a dark period I couldn’t even think of having a relationship. The doctor who I went in for check-up after the miscarriage would say something like ‘chop chop, clock is ticking, time is running out, you should try for another baby again as you are not young forever’, and I would just lie there on the cold hospital bed (why are hospital beds always so cold??), trying to accept that he means well, but I was mentally nowhere near even meeting a man to kiss, let alone trying for another baby. I had a pot belly from being pregnant until then even without a baby inside for God sake, felt out of shape, with still visible messy scars on my side (due to the assault) and I didn’t want to be naked with anyone. It is only in these recent two years that I slowly rediscovered myself, and found strength to date again.
Just like me, I am sure you all have your own stories, and we shouldn’t have to excuse ourselves to others when or who to fall in love. We can’t force our hearts. We don’t fall in love just because we are a certain age, social pressure, because we are lonely or want to be saved. The reason you are with that special person should be because you inspire each other, want to grow together, and will love them as they are, with their faults (plural as I have many). You will both be proud of who you were, who you are now, and who you will be.
I am realistic enough to know that I might never meet this awesome guy, but that’s ok too. It is my choice how to make the most of my life with the cards I’m dealt with and not dwell on self-pity. I want to be that person I can be proud of, independent of my relationship status. In the meantime, I can’t possibly complain being able to wake up whenever I like on the weekend without being questioned, go on dates with whichever devastatingly handsome and interesting man of my choice, and do whatever I want to do in my life without having to compromise (yeah, that means sometimes binge working on this blog, wearing red lipstick without worrying about messing it up by kissing, or walking around the flat stark naked without being told off that it is not ladylike. Hehe ;) ).
More on my dating trials, errors and adventures, which helped me open my eyes to what men reeaallly want (and it is not sex) in my blog coming soon.
Love,
Asako xxx
