How to be Single

An incomplete list for you and also me

Get really good at eating leftovers.

Listen to music you haven’t touched in years. Talk to yourself in ways you didn’t know possible.

Buy a bottle of St-Germain and a lime and make yourself a Hugo Spritz. Seriously.

Roll your eyes hard when you walk by a couple at the lake who is holding hands and laughing. Roll your eyes hard when you’re driving down College and a couple on the sidewalk is holding hands and laughing. Roll your eyes even though it is actually all quite sweet and the world is filled with love when you look for it even if that’s kind of annoying right now. Roll your eyes until it doesn't hurt anymore.

Take up knitting. Promptly put down knitting.

Pretend every person you make eye contact with on your walk to work wants you. Pretend every person in the bar who bumps up against your waistline wants you. Pretend every person who passes you by at the park and gives you a little nod hello wants you. Approach absolutely none of them.

Pine over men you haven’t seen in years. Pine over men who will never know your name. Pine over men you kind of made up in your brain because you had nothing else to think about.

Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge because you can. Walk across San Francisco alone because you can. With every step, you are older than you were before. With every step, you are something different than you were before.

Remember that it’s okay that you are stepping into all this by yourself.

Stop fixating on your stomach. The reason you are single has nothing to do with your stomach. Unbutton your pants on the drive home and do not regret the last beer.

Book a trip to the central coast on a whim. Sit in a hotel room alone. Go to the brewhouse off the 101 you were always curious about.

(You are all alone on the tour and the guide is 6’2” and sure of herself when she mentions she has a degree in developmental psychology. She tells you that this is the time in your life when you learn who you are; when you pick the personality that up until now you were only trying on. She reminds you of a Dolly Parton quote: Find out who you are, do it with purpose. A man on the brewing floor hands you a bottle of 805 straight from the bottling line. On the way out, she wishes you luck on your self-actualization journey.)

The hotel you book on the central coast is nicer than you thought it would be and you ignore the looks from the families and couples as you take the beer bottle straight from the bottling line around the vineyards and the gurgling fountains and manicured hedges. The cypress trees feel like the backyard of your childhood home in Sacramento and there is a black cat that stalks the grounds of the resort. Give him a pet.

Realize that a year ago, you would have been too anxious to walk among the vines in golden hour for fear of crossing some boundary, some off-limits zone. Know that a year ago, you would’ve asked permission.

Climb the vineyard and look out at the hills. Watch them for a while. Golden and blue and green. This is what California has been all along. These yellow undulations, these oak trees which nestle in their embrace. Love it as you would a warm body next to yours. As that is what it has been to you. If there is no one at home, there is at least always this.

Go to the beach. Eat a really big sandwich. Pass out in the sun next to your best friend from high school. Watch the beautiful bronzed bodies from the university nearby lie out and blast EDM, and try not to think about how now you are older than all of them. When half the Cal Poly football team arrives, let yourself look a few times and don’t feel insecure when they approach the skinny girls to your left and not you. Remember again, you’re older now. And definitely not desperate.

Keep going places alone. Go to a movie, go to dinner, go to a bar.

(You heard from a coworker once that she met her husband the first time she went to a bar alone. Keep it in mind. Don’t bet your life on it.)

You will get good at being alone. Like really good. You won’t mind it after a while. Even learn to like it. Even learn to take trips to the coast all by yourself, where you lie out by a pool and get sun poisoning. It’s actually fine that there was no one there to remind you to put on sunscreen.

Feel sad when the sadness comes. Feel lonely when the lonely bites at your heels. Wear it lightly; it will pass. You were loved once; you will be loved again.

(You are loved now, of course, but you know what I mean).

Scream along to an old Taylor Swift song. Feel every bend in the highway. Appreciate every oak tree you pass by. You will only see so many oak trees before you die. You will only scream along to so many old Taylor Swift songs. In the twilight among the golden hills, remember why you moved back to California.

Think long and hard about who you are and will be and what that means. Mostly come up empty.

Rewatch movies you loved when you were a teenager. Binge season three of Sex and the City. Take a bath. Realize you’re maybe a Miranda? Even if you say you’re a Carrie.

Host parties with ridiculous themes. Make a huge charcuterie board. Spring for the expensive cheese from the farmer’s market. It’s worth it.

Tell your friends that you love them every time you leave them.

Try to be gentle with yourself. Buy a big burrito at the place around the corner.

Even when it’s impossible to remember, remember that even though a man ghosts you again in the same kind of way they have since you were young, you are still deserving of respect and love and care. Even if that sounds silly right now.

Write a sad poem and show it to no one. Try to say something you mean, even when you think you don’t have anything to say. Chances are you do. And if you don’t, it doesn’t matter anyway.

After nearly a year of this, find that being alone can actually mean freedom, can actually mean a brisk walk down a crowded street directly towards all the things you’ve always wanted.

Find that you’ll be just fine. Which sounds stupid, but it’s true.

On the day you were sort of dreading and kind of feeling strange about, the day that for a few years was an anniversary, try not to think about it. Realize later that really you’re not trying all that hard. That actually, without you noticing, it’s gotten easier. Much easier.

Drink a glass of white wine with your friend from work at a cute little place in the city. It’s a city that is in some ways old to you but in many ways so new.

And maybe it feels good to be new. Let the goodness soak in.

Have another glass of wine. Go home and eat the leftovers.