In my head...

She's looking out to sea...looking for something, or just waiting with her eyes on the horizon?

I went to a work dinner this week and about ten people turned up. It was a lovely evening with luscious food and drink and company and afterwards on the drive home through the dark dark forest, the something that had been niggling at me all night became clear--I was the only single person at this work do.

Being single isn't something that I usually give much thought to, even though this blog is called The Book of Love, yet most of the time when I post I'm thinking about relationships--with family, friends, colleagues etc. I very rarely think about myself solo. And I don't mean the relationship I have with myself, luckily that's getting better every year, but I mean the actual being a single person in this world of un-singles.

I heard a statistic on the radio this week--over 6 million women in the UK are single, a figure that actually sounds scarier when you more than double it, as single men now outnumber women. That's a lot of people, yet not when you consider the entire population. But at this work do, I was suddenly in the presence of 10 other married people; not just dating or engaged but married and it shocked me a bit.

Part of me first thinks--how did they do it? How did they find that person that suits them? How did they find a match? God knows I've been trying and then not trying (as that's supposed to be more successful) for a long time now. So I'm just sitting with this thought. Most of my friends, well over 80%, are married and slowly, slowly, the older I get I find myself, more often than not, in the minority, or as recently, the only single in the group.

So then I arrived back home with this thought in my head and got into my oh-so-attractive snuggly pjs and dove beneath my lovely warm warm duvet and just as I was happily drifting into sleep I heard an odd sound. A bit of a thump mixed with a shriek. This sort-of woke me and I listened out again, just in case it was some nutter from the pub on the corner trying to get into the wrong house. But oh oh oh no...the sound was coming through my wall from the neighbour's and it was very clear they were both in the middle of a near-ecstasy moment which was quickly building up to an even better climax. And it went on and on and by then I was awake but trying to snuggle deeper into the blankets trying not to hear them having such a good time because it only brought back the knowledge of being very very single right now. And then one of those cheesy pop songs came to mind where it's all about being single and the singer spells out 's-o-l-o' at least 50 times in case we have forgotten how singular this word is.

Tonight I'm hanging out downstairs for a bit, to give my neighbours a bit of privacy and to keep my mind pure and free of not-single thoughts.

So my eye is on the horizon...perhaps my eye is also on someone right now...or not. I'm not actually very sure which! But either way I'm going to get into my snuggly pjs soon and just hope I can get to sleep before the sex Olympics start up again and make me jealous.