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  • The other day, I met a friend of mine for brunch when she broke the news...

  • Ahhhhhh! You've been chosen! You've been chosen!

  • And though I am genuinely happy for her, I also felt painfully aware that I have been single for over a year now.

  • I know, I know, thank you, children.

  • I have fulfilled the prophecy I made so long ago.

  • But being single for this long has been interesting and hard and terribly lonely but also awfully fun.

  • Hanging out with couples used to be really infuriating, but now?

  • I haven't had human touch in a long time, you guys.

  • Just let me have this.

  • I mean, yes, every time a friend has gotten engaged, there is a tinge of...

  • Am I gonna die alone?

  • Are my 5 cats just gonna eat my body until what's left of it is magically discovered?

  • Are my expectations of love just so unrealistically biased because of the media that I spent my entire life consuming that I have no real idea of what companionship looks like?

  • And thanks to my doctor, I am also hyper aware that...

  • Your biological clock is ticking.

  • Tick-tock on the clock, but the party don't stop, no.

  • Woah, woah, oh, oh.

  • Woah, woah, oh, oh.

  • And yes, all my friends my age who are also single are having conversations like...

  • Oh, I am definitely freezing my eggos.

  • Ugh, that's just so expensive. I think I'm just gonna adopt.

  • Adoption is expensive, too, and also really hard.

  • I'll just marry a man-child then.

  • I can have both.

  • So in a mini freak-out, I tweeted: "All of my friends are getting engaged, married, or having babies,"

  • "and I'm over here just genuinely happy for them because I do not compare my journey to anyone else's and neither should you!"

  • And I'm doing my best to live by this because, you know, compare and despair.

  • And the more I embrace that the ends are in the steps I take, the more I'm able to resonate with this.

  • It was especially enlightening when I was talking to a very happily-married friend of mine.

  • It was sort of this like, "I want what you have" situation, where I was very envious of her stable loving marriage and she felt envious of my stable growing career.

  • We were both looking at what the other had with so much longing that we couldn't really appreciate what we had in front of us.

  • What are you doing?

  • Oh, just hanging out, watching TV with my husband.

  • Oh, man, I'm so jelly. I remember companionship.

  • What are you doing?

  • Oh, just hanging out with my cat, watching TV.

  • Ugh, that sounds so great. I remember freedom.

  • Wanna trade?

  • Plus, I have several friends who also got married and had kids cause they thought it was the right path that they should take;

  • but in hindsight, have realized perhaps it wasn't necessarily the right path for them at that time.

  • Sometimes they wish they'd waited longer.

  • Some feel trapped in unhappy marriages.

  • And some regret giving up their careers and feel unfulfilled.

  • And I say this not to highlight their unhappiness, but to remind you and myself that it's really easy to look at what someone else has and idealize it.

  • Whether you're achieving professional success or engaged to your person,

  • there are still gonna to be issues to deal with, feelings to sort through, and a constant awareness to not take for granted what is right in front of you right now.

  • I'm Anna Akana.

  • We're gonna get through this, I hope.

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The other day, I met a friend of mine for brunch when she broke the news...

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