I have to admit that I couldn’t think of a good title for this post, nothing seemed to fit.

I had lunch with a friend today where a lively conversation was had on a wide range of topics.  It’s an amazing thing when you find someone to talk to who just GETS it.  The topic of finding yourself or finding your voice came up.  Not as in speaking, but as in who you are as a person.  Sometimes bits and pieces of conversations like that float around in my head and land in weird places.

It occurred to me how being a lifelong single person is so incredibly different from being part of a couple.  Ok, so that seems sort of obvious but what I’m getting at is how we see ourselves.  When part of a couple, we see ourselves as a unit, not an individual.

I can remember a time in my twenties when I wanted to be part of a couple, thought it was the thing to do.  I wanted to be part of something and I wanted to just belong somewhere.  It’s just weird to feel on the outside looking in or the person who always seems to make a group an odd number instead of an even number.  I was the person saving the table while the couple went out to the dance floor.  Yeah, that was me.  I could never quite figure out what everyone else knew that I didn’t or what quality everyone else seemingly had that I didn’t.  So I stopped socializing with couples, it was just easier to be alone.

Around this same time, I started to travel alone and it didn’t feel weird anymore.  It was just something I wanted to do.  Of course, my married friends pretended to be envious and I’d invite them along.  The invitation was met with “wish I could but so and so won’t let me go”.  Won’t LET you?  Huh.

Looking back on it today, I realized I had a far stronger sense of “self” than most people.  I had struggled with anger and depression after my parents divorced but still managed to carve out a life that wasn’t half bad.  I became fiercely independent.

By the time I hit thirty or so, I started to subconsciously fear losing that sense of self and independence.  I couldn’t imagine asking permission to things or being the permission granter.  It was a foreign concept of sorts.  I didn’t want to lose or give up what I had fought so hard to attain.  What I realized was I didn’t need a man to make me feel “whole” – I already WAS whole.  What I feared was losing pieces to someone else to no longer be whole, but fragmented.

To be fair, there are many married couples who are perfectly happy being a couple and thinking like a couple and operating like a unit.  They are known as a couple – Mary and Tom; Sue and Bob; or Joan and Herb.   I worked with someone who rarely spoke a sentence without mentioning her husband.  I wanted to scream “do you not have a thought of your own, ever?”  It was like she didn’t exist as a person.

It seems females are rarely raised to think of themselves as an individual.  They are raised or groomed to seek out a male to date and eventually marry. They aren’t taught how to figure out life on our own.  It is odd to be single even if they are living a full life.  It’s like it doesn’t count if the aren’t attached to someone.

Take time to find out who you are and never lose that person.  Don’t let anyone take pieces of your soul.