The words of much wiser, braver women have been swimming in my head for days. I don’t know how to make them fit neatly into the spaces I’m trying to jam them, but I know, in my waters, that they fit somewhere.
I have been beyond lucky to be surrounded by brave, wise women for my entire life. Even in the moments of my much younger self when I refused to believe they were wise, I knew they were brave. As I’ve grown, and now as I approach middle age, I search for these women in the spaces in between the mundane and tedium that is parenthood. I search for them in all of the spaces looking for the words that can make me feel as brave and as wise as they are.
This week the words of a Brisbane author and a Melbourne comedian saw parts of my life like only strangers can. The raw observations of strangers making me feel seen in the same way a clairvoyant or tea leaf reader can validate the most obscure of choices they could never have possibly known.
Claire Christian’s new podcast asks people to send love letters to their best friends. She suggests that our besties are actually the real loves of our lives, and it is their undying faith, bravery and love that allows us to exist in the other relationships and orbits we function in daily. I heard her. I had always thought this was something only I had told myself because I didn’t have a partner. That for me, my love story would always be my besties.
It was a story I have told myself over and over again. I have always tried to force myself to believe it wasn’t a consolation prize – that choosing my best friends as the love story of my life – was a conscious decision. But deep down, way at the back, Fat Anna (the whisperer of doubt and shame) had always whispered ‘that’s because they’re all you’ve got.’
This week, a complete stranger suggested that it’s the same for a lot of us. That nearly all of us have besties who are more important, are bigger parts of our self, than any other long term relationship that we have. That our besties actually help us be better parents, partners and people and yet we live in a world where that isn’t celebrated or publicly acknowledged with any kind of importance.
No special day on the calendar, no anniversary, no marked ceremony that we tell the world that our person is right here, this one, and no it’s not the one person I sleep beside every night. I had always thought my long term single (LTS) label had made this the case for me because I didn’t have any other choice. My only choice has always been to exist as the third person in a series of marriages that I was I never invited into.
And yet in breaking news this week, a complete stranger has suggested otherwise. Apparently there are people out there, lots of them, who rely on their besties to keep their orbit grounded and moving forward. I knew I relied on my besties to do that for me, but I hadn’t considered for a single second that I may hold that space for them.
I know I do. I know I hold space for all of them to some extent but I never considered before that they need me just as much as I need them. I had always believed my LTS status put me in a category that meant I had to farm out my reliance so I didn’t over burden my besties with the mundane over-exhaustion that is single, and now single parent, life.
Not a single one of them has ever given me any indication that Fat Anna was right. That I am a burden or an unwelcome addition to their marriages. Their husbands and wives may not have always thought the same – but they seem to let me stay anyway. In our heads we can know that our friendships are reciprocal. That our investments are returned in kind and that the love you give is felt in return. But our heart doesn’t always get the email.
Feelings, I’ve decided, are often gaslighting losers. They have purist intentions to make you take notice and pay attention and they play out in dramatic operas when they should really just be footnotes, and sometimes even less.
I’d never heard the term LTS before this week either. An acronym that I could put on Tinder to explain my lack of relationship status. I am Long Term Single and have been forever but I don’t fit the crazy cat lady trope that’s farmed out about spinsters. I didn’t wake up one morning and declare to the world that I am not one for romantic relationships. Nope, not for me. In fact I’ve actively pursued them for years and for a thousand reasons and more – it’s just never worked out for me.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want one, but it doesn’t mean I’m at home most nights crying myself to sleep because I’m not in one. I still celebrate the big moments, I made the choice to have a family anyway, I choose day after day to do the things that gives us the life I wanted. Sometimes I am sad, sometimes I am lonely, sometimes I wish that things had turned out differently – but everyone feels like that sometimes and not for a single second does that mean I am not celebrating the life I have. I’ve invented our own traditions, rituals and ceremonies and I’ve built a village to celebrate those with us.
So here I am. Long term single with more besties than I can count on my hands, doing what I can to celebrate the life we have, in all of its mess and chaos, for as many of our days as I can. Knowing, and feeling, that the love we have for those in our village is sent back to us in waves and ways that no ceremony – and no partner- can fully acknowledge.
Besties you are loved and valued and appreciated and I am forever grateful that you embrace my mess, my chaos and my mundane tedium and that you show my kid – and me – real love in it’s all grace and beauty every single day. I think it’s time we take back the term spinster. Suggestions are being taken for a new definition to add to urban dictionary.
Spinster (n): a coincidentally single woman who buys her own wine and takes out her own garbage but isn’t mad about it.
life in big frilly knickers 