November 2013 - Marginally Clever Girl

Greetings and Ovulations

Almost everyone knows that when two women of child bearing age (for lack of a better term) spend a great deal of time together, they will find that their menstrual cycles will line up. So, once a month, you and your roommate (for example) will be dealing with the symptoms of your pending period together. If you are both unfortunate enough to suffer from PMS, you might tactfully avoid each other during the days leading up to the main event. After all, it is a much safer bet to expose romantic partners and blood relatives to the potentially irrationality and dramatics that might ensure. But this is pretty much common knowledge.

There is actually a wonderful perk to sharing a cycle with your best friend that is rarely discussed; you also ovulate together.

I am at my personal best when I ovulate. I’m hesitant to say this because I don’t want to overstate the impact that my hormones have on my behaviour. But I am playful, funny, upbeat, friendly and hilarious. This is a fact. And the same holds true for my roommate. Once a month we are always up for a few nights of mayhem and shenanigans.

For example, during this other, more fun ‘time of the month’, we have been known to partake in stolen floral curation. Our artistic process starts with drinking too much wine (as if there is such thing as ‘too much wine’), stealing flowers and other carefully chosen foliage from the gardens of neighbours, giggling as we frolic (and, yes we are technically ‘frolicking’).

Even a few weeks ago, we were looking at the pumpkin on our porch. It was at least a week after Halloween. We actually felt slighted that no one had smashed it yet. So, she suggested that I should do the smashing while she made sure that no one saw. With all of my strength, I pounded it into the middle of the street, where it bounced, and landed in the neighbour’s culvert. This of course made me feel inadequate. But, she quickly helped me move on, by grabbing the pumpkin and giving it an American History X style sidewalk smiley. And, again frolicking ensued.

We are 33 years old.

So, the point of this post is not to fret when you are an officially adult (hetero) woman, and find yourself in a position where you shack up with a fellow single lady. With her and your uteruses (uterai?), you are both in for a treat. And, your ‘Aunt Flo’, although she can sometimes be a downer, will always be preceded by your ‘Aunt Fun’.

“I’m Picky” is the single most annoying reason you give for being single.

You’re single. You’ve been single for a long time. That’s fantastic. I think that singlehood is great, and I sincerely admire people who can stay single for lengthy periods of time. I think that it requires a lot of independence and introspection.

I’ve never been good at being single. In fact the longest I’ve ever been able to sustain singlehood is about 3 months. When I am single, ‘single’ annoyingly becomes my primary identity. I probably drive my friends nuts with relentless declarations of my single identity. Starting sentences like, “As a single person, I….”, or “Now that I’m single, I…” In fact, I would often find myself pausing for effect after telling people that I was single. I do the same thing when I tell people that I’m 33, expecting surprise and shock from my co-converser. I also tend to drink too much and take great satisfaction in receiving attention from way too young men… that might actually be a constant for me, but it is absolutely exacerbated when I’m unattached.

I used to think that this fact was the result of all sorts of psychological and social pathologies that I couldn’t even begin to understand. Now that I think about it, I probably have to be in a relationship to be tolerable to my friends, because, as I am just now realizing, I am an annoying asshole when I am unattached. I also have an “annoying” tendency to make out with their brothers, which tends to express itself when I am single. So, really, if I want to keep my friends, I need to be romantically committed because their thresholds for dealing with my shenanigans is likely pushing its limit at three months.

But, it wasn’t really my intention to talk about me (my mother’s right when she incessantly tells me, “not everything is about you”). I want to talk about you, the single person (I am actively hesitating from using the term ‘chronic’ as an adjective, because singlehood is not a disease). I have a bone to pick with those of you who tell me that you’re single because you’re “picky”.

“Picky” is a gross word.

When you tell attached people that you’re single because you’re “picky”, you are basically saying “I’m above that lowered expectations shit that you’ve got going on.” Seriously, it’s insulting. Stop it. Even if you believe that it is true, stop saying it out loud, because you sound like an asshole. I don’t blame you for feeling obliged to manage the stigmas around being single, especially if you are a woman. It isn’t your fault that our culture frames single women in their 20s-40s as pitiful maladjusted creatures. If you don’t believe that this stigma exists, just look at the covers of the tabloids at the grocery store; on any given week, you will see a rich, famous, successful and beautiful woman being depicted as “alone”. We are supposed to pity her. Jennifer Aniston had more than her fair share of this bullshit. So, yes, being a single woman demands stigma management; it is sexist and awful. But, please find more creative ways of dealing with that stigma without being a dick.

Thank you.