On: Love In Your Almost Mid- Thirties.

For someone who is very much a long-term single girly – I sure love writing about love don’t I? Valentine’s Day is a few hours away and after much encouragement from the masses (three people), here is where I’m at as a woman in her almost mid-thirties who is still single. Three nights ago after another empty hinge conversation, in which I felt like I was heading up an interview at KPMG with a man unable to drive a basic conversation forward, I decided to delete my dating apps after a whopping two weeks. Every time it’s the story, I glean a glimmer of hope after someone regales the rousing tale of how they met their significant other online and I think hmmm… one more try? Online it’s a similar story, there seems to be a huge disconnect between modern man and woman, and the older I get, the deeper the divide seems to become. For the first time in history, we’re able to get unadulterated first-hand accounts and musings from women all over the globe about their lives. Single, married, kids, working, stay-at-home mums, white, black, Asian, Middle Eastern, older, younger, middle aged – every and any first-hand account you can think of. Between those accounts and honest conversations with family and friends, instead of enmity towards my season of singleness, I’ve begun to notice the flowers erupting on what i thought was the barren land of my singleness. 

I used to be a Lover Girl 101, but I suppose with age comes wisdom and apprehension. I’m finding that the rose-coloured glasses I would throw on with ease, particularly during the honeymoon / early stages of getting to know someone are nowhere to be found. Instead, I’ve been pulling out my heavy-duty magnifying glass for maximum 20/20 vision and asking all the difficult questions that 21-year-old Sade would never have the balls to do. There’s a sort of strength to my singleness that I didn’t have previously – maybe because then I didn’t feel like being single was a choice, whereas now I’m happy to wait for the right person be it another five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years. I’m also okay with the idea of possibly never finding my person, and for a while, I grieved the life I thought I would have – the white picket fence, the husband, the kids – once the tears dried I funneled the residual energy into clapping for those around me that had reached the all coveted adulthood milestones, and also into pouring back into myself. I stopped saving my most expensive perfumes for special occasions and now I wear my MFK Oud Satin Mood around the house. I started burning my fanciest Diptyque candles during my weekly Sunday self-care sessions. I started taking myself out to places I’d been wanting to go for dinner instead of waiting for someone to take me. Sometimes I do get the odd pang of wanting someone to do something for me – in a more intimate sense, but my sisters fill that gap – for which I am always eternally grateful. 

For a long time. – too long a period of time, i spent endless nights being kept awake by the thoughts of “will this ever happen for me?”. Eventually i grew tired of unintentionally making myself sad by way of swirling thoughts centred around me being enough, or wondering if i should have just settled. I’m not sure when it happened – perhaps after one too many empty conversations on hinge / bumble, but I started stepping into my light and learned to love myself, my life and my portion as it is right now. 

And whilst the Christian side of me is reminded that God doesn’t put anything on your heart that he doesn’t believe for you, i’m also very much a realist and understand that not everyone meets their person in this lifetime and perhaps my goal for this lifetime is something entirely different to the life i thought i’d be living. 

I suppose i’m writing this for anyone who feels frustrated and misunderstood with longing and yearning – loosen your grip, let it slowly slide through your fingers, smooth as silk, when it gets to the tips of your fingers, don’t give into the compulsion to grab it, let it skim the last of your skin and watch it billow in the wind. A shiny shimmering ribbon of red floating upwards towards the sky. You don’t stretch your hands toward it like you have done many times before, instead you watch it dance; an illuminated scarlet against an inky black sky. You’ve finally learned to let go, and how good, how freeing, how vast it seems. The world is yours for the taking, you are whole, you are free. You are free.