You need to find a partner in life to make your life whole.”
I recall one of my grandma’s sisters declaring something to that effect on a rare afternoon I stayed in their residence. Back then, no one seated by the dining table uttered a word. And neither did I, though I confess, it was hard for my eyebrows not to pinch themselves in cringy distaste, laughter weathering itself in the back of my throat. Far be it for me to deny hopeless romantics of their rosy crusade. But these were some of the many instances throughout my life where I was confronted with the reality that I was a single, “no-jowa-since-birth” (NJSB) person who saw herself likely ending up as a spinster.
Another time, while waiting for my cousin to arrive at a meeting spot before heading to a family outing together, her boyfriend and I got into a conversation and somehow ended up on the topic of relationships. He seemed somewhat fascinated at the prospect of someone like me, who had never really formed any solid romantic relationships. And while I’ve learned to shrug encounters like these off, it can occasionally feel alienating. Many years later, I’ll admit it as an insecurity. Indeed, my year is not complete with at least a dozen similar queries of “May boyfriend ka na ba?” at family reunions.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being that kind of person. There’s usually a pattern of explanations to the NJSB phenomena: these people could be devoting time to more urgent priorities; better causes that consume their time, they may not know how to put themselves out there or perhaps it’s simply not in the cards for them just yet. I’m pretty sure I’ve used all those reasons and their variants throughout the years.
Not unlike a detective in some mystery novel, I found myself piecing together the root causes of this odd phenomenon the people in my life have pestered me about. At some point, I jokingly treated it as a scientific inquiry. I’ve found traces of reasons in my family history, in the sawi statuses of my single mother and grandmother; the latter adamant in her cause of never rekindling her marriage, but remaining amicable in polite company when broached about the topic of her “husband staying at our farm.” It might have also stemmed from the inappropriate jokes about me “following my mother’s footsteps,” by which they meant that I would be pregnant in my early 20s. At some point, I recall resentment, a childish resistance to be romantically undesirable to ensure that would never be the case. But upon discovering my sexuality, that willpower didn’t stand the test of time; the resistance was rendered invalid.
Of course, never being a player meant I would be more of a spectator. I’ve witnessed relationships end in disaster, marriages crumble and families separate (only to mesh together a semblance of healing years after) all around me, and I think to myself whenever this dissolution of bonds found themselves in gossipers’ lips, was the pursuit of a love like that truly worth it?
But I digress. To my dear Titas, I can’t say it was ever for lack of trying. I’ve had my share of attempts in dating apps and blind dates. Compromise in resistance was made in the form of unsolicited confessions to unrequited people. I’ve had my moments where I aspired to connect and feel needed by someone other than myself and my familiars. And I must say as the year draws to a close, in my 23 short years in this world, I sympathize with my grandmother’s sister. The desire to think and care for someone other than the known was, as I’ve come to realize, a need from the heart.
Though amidst all this turmoil, and a few failed prospects later, my contention for this missing thing in my life is: Why did that make me any less of a person, anyway? Why did I have to look for what I lacked in somebody else who was predisposed to make me whole? Why did I have to make an effort to be loved when to be loved for who I am is much more rewarding?
I mean sure, romance is a social gamble, a dance of compromise, a gradual rhythm of like-mindedness. But to bear a burden that destroys your sense of worth seemed a cruel fate. Is it not a romance in itself to not settle for the deficient? Is it not love to realize you deserve better; not to settle for the bare minimum, to dignify yourself in not indulging in scraps stragglers couldn’t be bothered to give? Love can mean working things out, but love for yourself can also mean learning to walk away from what you know doesn’t feel right.
Perhaps I’ve written this as a way to console myself for the dreaded family reunions, but in the depths of my being, I know if singlehood is the price I pay for the resistance to settle for less, then it’s a price I’ll pay in every lifetime.
A few more prospects may come, or none at all, but I shall entertain, not to satisfy some socially constructed expectation, but because it is what I believe I deserve.
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Abel Mejico, 23, is studying sociology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, using writing as a way to cope with… well, everything!