I Could Sleep Forever

Recently, an acquaintance told me she had a conversation with some old friends of mine, who asked about me.

“They asked me if you were married, and I told them no,” she explained, with a sad look on her face.

“And then they asked me if you had any prospects, and I told them I didn’t think so,” she looked at me with a little frown. “And then she said, ‘That’s such a shame, because she’s so sweet. I don’t know why she isn’t married.’”

While I appreciate the fact that I am, indeed, “sweet,” which is much better than being classified as, oh, “bitter,” that dreaded phrase “I don’t know why you aren’t married yet” is not quite the compliment I think some people believe it to be.

I know it is meant, in all innocence, as more of a “You’re a great catch,” but to the single (or at least this single) there is an unspoken fear that, deep down, there is something wrong with you. That somewhere along the way I screwed things up. I didn’t pray hard enough; I overlooked someone. I wasn’t thin enough, pretty enough, or congenial enough. I was too independent, too talkative, too quiet, too outgoing, too short, too fat, too curly-haired, too spiritual, too worldly, too, too, too….

It messes with my mind. It makes me doubt myself and worse, it makes me doubt God’s plans for my life. I feel like the leftover, the forgotten, the one who must always plaster a smile on her face as she sits at dinner with all her couple friends once again and pretend everything is all okay. And frankly, there are moments when it is just not.

Compared to the problems other people have I know this is tiny, nothing, miniscule. It’s just my little bundle of sticks to carry. But at the moment, I’m tired just so tired of carrying them.