Valentine's Day was just a few weeks ago, and I made it unscathed as a single, not having anyone special, and knowing I never will. Buying cards and giving them along with some $$ inside to my 6 nieces and nephews made it a little easier, but it is still rough being single on Valentine's Day.
Someone posted something I found very offensive on V-day, and it has bugged me ever since, I didn't comment, but this blog post is a result of that post. It was this meme:
The person who posted it had a parent die 6 months previous to V-day, so they have reason to miss a parent. But it is insensitive and rude. It infers that if you are single on the day when it is all about being with someone special that you love, you have no reason to feel bad since there are people who are missing a parent on Mother's Day or Father's Day. They have a right to feel bad, but I don't. On a day that they celebrate love with their special one they love, I have no right to feel left out, for in a couple of months, they will have a day that everyone celebrates and they will feel a sense of loss.
Yes, there is a difference in losing someone and not having someone in the first place, but there is still loss, sorrow.
I am a guy, but I tend to be more emotional than most men, but I am not like most men,. If I were, I would be married and have kids.
I avoid weddings because I hurt inside, knowing that can never be me standing there as a woman walks down the aisle to share her life with me.
I tend to avoid romance books for the same reason.
I have cried myself to sleep from the loneliness and desire to have someone to love.
I cry in movies and books when people kiss or there is some kind of romantic moment.
I can still remember the day I boxed up the dating books I had bought in hopes of someday needing them, and sitting on the floor as tears rolled down my face, feeling a strong sense of loss.
It is a world for couples, for lovers. Commercials are aimed at people in a relationship. Restaurants are geared for more people in a party than one. Holidays emphasize a time for family, especially your own.
Single people have a strong desire to love someone, and be loved. They feel attraction, whether to the opposite sex or the same sex. They have the urge to be sexual with someone special they love. That stuff doesn't just shut off when you are single, even when you resign yourself to a life of singleness.
And there are reasons people are single. Some just can't meet the right guy or girl. Some are so scarred and hurt from something that happened, they can't get that close to someone. Some struggle with attractions to the same sex, and though some are able to overcome that enough to marry and love someone of the opposite sex, some cannot. Some, usually women, never have anyone ask them on a date, much less to marry. Some have a deformity or illness that makes dating and marriage highly unlikely, or not at all likely.
But most, maybe all of the people in all of those scenarios have something in common: They wish they were not single. They wished they had someone special to love and whose life revolved around them. They wish they didn't feel so out of place in a couple's world.
Some can't handle it. Some Christian young men and women lower their standards and date someone they know is not God's choice. Some give up on finding someone in the church, and walk away from God and pick a spouse over God. Some weary of fighting attractions and desires they never asked for for the same sex, and give up and jump into the gay lifestyle. Some kill themselves our of loneliness and the desire for love.
It isn't easy being single. It is lonely. It gets old. I feel I don't fit in anywhere. And the devil fights. If I just gave in, I could have someone to love...... if I ignored what the Bible says, I could be happy. Really? Can anyone be happy living contrary to what God says?
Don't knock the single people in your life for feeling left out on V-day, or any other day of the year. Instead, pray for them. There may be reasons you don't know why they are single. They, like me, may joke about not wanting to get married, while wishing with everything inside of them that they could marry.
This is not a post to make those who read it feel sorry for me. It is an attempt to show married or dating people that not all singles want to be single, and some have reasons they cannot marry. It is an attempt to raise awareness that it isn't easy being single. Oh, there are some advantages, and the Bible even says we are better off to stay single. Jesus was single, and I like to point out once in a while that when we pray, we are praying to a single adult..... but overall, it is rough and difficult. Satan fights us all, but I believe he fights singles in different ways, and has different temptations for us.
In Heaven, there will be no marriages or anyone given in marriage. We will all be single up there. So I guess we singles have just got a head start on the rest of you.
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