I've come to a realisation that the modern world doesn't know how to deal with a single person. It doesn't seem to matter if that person is single, separated or divorced, whether they are old or young. Our society treats them as somehow odd and assumes that everyone should always be part of a couple. They can just about deal with single parents or the very elderly widow as somehow that is acceptable. But if you are single by choice or circumstance or your marriage imploded, then the only course of action to society is to couple up as soon as possible. If you just don't want to go back into a relationship or you just don't meet people who are attracted to you, then you are seen as a freak.
When you are married, you enter into a kind of club of acceptable people. Couples will invite other couples to dinner, but their single friends are often left out unless they are there to match make. Even if that single friend has been part of their life for decades, if they make a new married friend in the meantime, then that is the new chosen person - the one who gets chosen as godparent, as somehow more acceptable. It doesn't matter if that single person would actually have more time and love to give to their friends or that they had been there as a friend for a long time.
When I was married, some people treated me differently, even some family members suddenly found me more interesting, would invite us as a couple to events that weren't open to me when I was single. I loved being married but I didn't understand why I had a special status. Even as a couple when we socialised, we rarely just invited other couples, we invited friends, single and married because we wanted to spend time with them. I'm proud that I didn't drop my friends or ignore the single or divorced ones. That fact that one of those people we took into our home turned out to be trying to live vicariously through my life doesn't change how I feel either. All of the others, family or friends, married or single were worth the effort I put into our relationship.
After my marriage ended a couple of years ago, it seemed as if some people didn't understand why I didn't leap into a new relationship within weeks. Even worse than that, I've been shouted at, told how to live my life, and made to feel as if I don't fit in. I've been sidelined, told how to think and who to love.
We all need to remember that there is more than one way to live your life. It isn't just about marriage, mortgage, kids. Life is more complex and dark and fascinating and joyful than that. Life is about the journey, and if we are lucky we have many companions on that journey who impact on our life. We may be married happily for decades, we may never meet anyone at all, we may only have a brief relationship in middle life, we may meet a special person at the age of seventy. We all have glimpses of joy and moments of despair. We are all worthy of friendship and love and understanding. We are all somehow broken and in need of support from our fellow human beings.
Through the darkest days of my life a couple of years ago, I came to a realisation that had been in the back of my consciousness for most of my life. I'm an artist; my soul needs to be creative, to express the wonder and joy and misery and confusion of life. It isn't just about drawing and painting, it is about creativity in all its forms; having my chaotic overgrown garden filled with insects and birds, having a home that soothes and fascinates my senses. All of us have passions and things that make us who we are. Whether we are single or married is often the least interesting part of our story.
We are all just travellers on one great journey home,
in need of daily grace filled reminders
that none of us are travelling alone.
Morgan Harper Nichols
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