Single

Note: this is journal entry from summer 2025, please read with compassion

This morning I found my mind racing, flying between sexual thoughts and feelings of loneliness. Peak single life. I’m so glad to have other friends who are single too. They keep me sane, they give me a sense of normality to my state of being.

When I was sat in the sun I had to think of France. The buzzing of insects around my face, some of them bumping into me occasionally, awoke the feeling of the countryside. That raw French summer, endless green and thunderstorms that roll through and engulf benque. For some reason benque is a safe space in my mind. A place I can go to in order to feel respite, to heal, to accept being alone.

There are many times that I have thought to benque. Though the association with respite only came later. That was the place I used to heal from basak. To enjoy family life, to abstain from drinking and hedonism.

The impact of casual dating is non trivial. It takes up not only time but also occupies emotional space in my mind. And I’ve become so much better in detaching from the turbulence, but one always needs to be somewhat emotionally involved. After all, human connection for me is inherently emotional.

The ability to pick oneself up, to say there are plenty more fish, to find a middle ground between bearing responsibility for failure and accepting that you cannot control other people is a skill so difficult that many people refuse to even try and learn it. The safety of a relationship is in part so appealing precisely because it shields both parties from the need to grapple this skill. With the ups and downs and loneliness on Sundays.

This safety comes at a cost in many cases. Tedium and compromise are the price. And as I consider my loneliness this morning I ask whether such a compromise is worth making. Ultimately there needs to be a person who makes it worth it. A person who shifts the dial and makes tedium look like love and compromise seem like exploration.