What I Wish I Knew Before I Turned 22: Single Is Better

Earlier this year, in a burst of existentialist-related boredom, I entered law school.

Six weeks later, I was running towards the opposite direction.

Yeah. What Elle Woods said.

The experience could only be described as my closest brush to a divorce gone wrong.

It wasn’t as if I just rolled out of bed one day and told myself I wanted out, and then I was out.

No, it was a week’s stretch of hounding after law professors who could never be caught sipping coffee from paper cups in the faculty room.

It consisted of having my application for withdrawal rejected mid-process, because, as a full scholar, I was required to return the books I was given.

The very same books I sold the week before that.

I was, for the lack of a better word, screwed.

I could not help but think that, had I thoroughly examined my decision to enter law school, or at least taken the time out to see the gaping void below before stepping over the edge and free falling into it, I would never have taken the plunge in the first place.

“At least Four’s waiting with the safety net below,” said no one ever.

However bad the decision is, one simply has to live with the consequential guilt of a failure and mentally file it under “experience,” rather than “trauma-inducing.”

It’s not you, law school. It’s me. I’m just not ready to commit to anything remotely serious right now – and thank God for that.

More than half the time, I make grim prophecies about my impending spinsterhood and loudly lament the endangered species known as chivalrous gentlemen-us.

R.I.P. Chivalry 1979-2008

This month, I was able to reconcile with my dateless Friday nights, thanks to a friend (whose name I shall not disclose at the implicit threat of an F.O.) who broke up with her boyfriend (twice) and made up with him… twice. Did I mention this whole emotional roller coaster took place in a single month?

Is it just me overreacting, or is there something bordering on insanity whenever couples get romantically-involved?

Thank God for singlehood.

I stress over running late in the morning, simply because I take 5 minutes too long nursing my cup of coffee. I freak out when I realize my favorite top is still at the laundromat. I break down and question the purpose of my life when my perfectly planned-out schedule takes a turn for the worse. Who needs the added stress of a committed romantic relationship?

Ergo, single is better.

And please don’t take me out of context. I speak for myself when I say that.

Being single is infinitely better for me right now when I can’t even make up my mind about what to do for the rest of my life.

Being single not only allows me to ask myself “What can I do next?” but even “What do I want to do next?”

At 22, I’ve come to realize that I haven’t yet fully realized just how many things I can do and which of the countless possibilities I actually want to do.

I live in a society where graduating college is, to some extent, the end-all and be-all. The norm hasn’t changed much here since the 1960s when my grandmother faked her college graduation just to get her conservative father’s permission to marry my grandfather.

Okay, so marriage isn’t exactly what kids have in mind fresh out of the university halls, but the idea is more or less the same: just graduate college and you get your hard-earned freedom.

But freedom is tricky at best and terrifying at worst.

That’s why I think there is a lot to be grateful about being single in my early twenties.

Never mind the 1,001 creative ways to spend dateless Friday nights besides shimmying in my pajamas watching old romantic comedies.

Tip #1,002: Lip sync to Celine Dion’s “All By Myself” … and time the drum solo perfectly

The world is just waiting for me to do something.

I’ve served my time in 4-sided walls: 17 years on an armchair and going-on-2 years behind the desk up front.

Busting out of law school was just the beginning.

It was a little box inside a million other boxes, each one bigger than before. Once I was out of it, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that I exchanged one prison cell for another one, a little bit bigger, sure, but a prison cell nonetheless.

Unless, we’re talking about the TARDIS, of course. It’s bigger on the inside.

Now, has my childhood indoctrination of escapist literature in the form of fairy tales finally caught up with me?

Am I going out of my mind?

Half the time it certainly feels like it.

Maybe the day I convince myself I’ve escaped the last box will also be the day the rest of the world will diagnose my insanity.

And then there’s the other possibility: that I’m simply lending a voice to an entire generation of twenty-somethings experiencing a universal phenomenon known as a quarter-life crisis.

The beauty of being single in this age of uncertainty is that either possibilities are inconsequential.

I will be facing my own demons and fighting my inner battles alone.

Ew. No.

I won’t ever have to worry about hurting somebody I don’t deserve to have in my life right now.

Maybe someday. But not now.