My last relationship ended almost a year ago now, and for the first few months I treated being single like a waiting room — something to sit in until the next thing started. I made plans around the idea that it was temporary. Looking back, that's most of what made it feel bad.
I've cancelled more solo plans than I've kept, which is the part nobody puts in the caption. Trips I almost didn't take because no one else could come. A pottery class I signed up for and skipped twice out of a strange embarrassment about showing up alone. The times I actually went taught me more than the ones I skipped — mostly that most of what felt like loneliness was actually just unfamiliarity.
"Being single stopped feeling like a waiting room the day I stopped scheduling my life around the idea that it would end soon."
Some evenings are just mine now, and I've stopped apologizing for that, even internally. No checking in, no negotiating plans, no small daily compromises I didn't notice I was making until they were gone. It's become the closest thing I have to a reset — no performance, just the small, specific relief of a day that answers to nobody but me.
I'm not saying I'm not open to dating again — I am, when it happens it happens. But I stopped rushing it, because rushing it was the thing making single feel like something to get through instead of something to actually live in. It turns out I like my own company more than I gave myself credit for.