Sex and the City has exactly 3 perfect scenes:
1. When Charlotte tells the girls maybe they are each other’s soulmates and the men they date are just people to have fun with;
2. When Steve calls Miranda in the middle of the night to tell her to look at the full moon;
3. When Miranda and Carrie leave an engagement party full of couples called “Two Souls, One Thought” and bitch about it.
The dialogue from the Miranda and Carrie scene gets branded on all singles with a hot iron in an underground secret ceremony when they reach 26. It goes as follows:
M: “We were the only single people in there.”
C: “Miranda, we’re the only single people everywhere.”
M: “Are you telling me you didn’t see all those “don’t worry, you’ll find someone” looks?”
C: “Nope, didn’t see them.”
M: “Society views single people our age as sad and pathetic, and I don’t need that judgement hanging over my head, so I go on the offensive and make them laugh.”
C: “You know, sometimes I think couples look at us and wish they had our lives.”
M: “No, we make them uncomfortable, and they don’t know what to say.”
I have watched Sex and the City in its entirety twice during the pandemic, and I am not ashamed. During my viewings, I couldn’t help but wonder: what would Carrie and Miranda think of being single in the year of our Satan 2020? I decided to fill them in.
Posting on Instagram
Do you remember when we descended into a global pandemic and were alone and had to spend more time on social media than ever before just to feel alive and the couples decided that this was the fucking time to start the “post your first picture together” Instagram trend? DO YOU REMEMBER THIS? Anyways. I’m fine. In hindsight, I do regret not posting my entry for the trend: me in a steamy robe with my beau, Nutella, also known as a jarred orgasm.
Just Like, Living In A Body
As a single gal, I have a lot of time to, I don’t know, stare at myself in the mirror? No one else is looking, so I might as well curiously poke and prod my nipples and ass cheeks. It’s called living, baby. As a result of the prodding, I have become obsessively bewildered by how low my butt crack is. It should anatomically be at least 1 inch higher than it is. Did someone take an eraser to my lower region in the womb? I need answers!
On the bright side, if we decline further into hell in 2021 and the fashion industry decides to bring back low-rise jeans, my butt crack will have her fucking moment.
Melodramatic Flare Episodes
One of the great surprises of 2020 is you never know when your next angry emotional breakdown will happen. As a single person, I’ve had the added surprise of not knowing who will be the recipient of my unleashed feelings, which I lovingly call my “melodramatic flare [insert fire emoji] episodes.” Listen, when you haven’t spoken out loud to anyone other than the characters you yell at on the TV for days, you undoubtedly build up undue amounts of pent up emotion that may just explode on your friend who called to say hi on an unassuming Tuesday afternoon.
Couples have their built-in emotional breakdown buddy at the ready. That’s wonderful for them. But for us singles, knowing when we’ll let loose an outward emotional breakdown is really like playing a game of Russian roulette with our unknowing friends and family members. Which means managing damage control after an emotional blowup can be a high stakes situation. Because we don’t have the advantage of knowing the person we yelled our feelings at is attracted to us to soften the blow, we gotta own up and apologize like a real person without the “I know you think it’s cute when I pout my lip like this” advantage to distract from the fact that we were absolute trash. Instead, we just gotta sit in our stank and hope our friend doesn’t disown us.
Going to the Grocery Store
Is being in a relationship during a pandemic hard? I’m sure. But you have the possibility for sex and hand holding and someone to go grocery shopping for you when you’re too lazy (read: emotionally devastated) to leave your pajamas, couch, and pint of chocolate ice cream. My god, there is someone in immediate proximity to you who will willingly remove their body from the couch and traverse outdoors to the store just because you’re a basic bitch who suddenly can’t live without spreadable cheese and warm bread. I MEAN, I JUST, I CANNOT. I am emotional thinking about this absolute marvel. Getting spreadable cheese for someone is the 6th love language, and no, I will not be taking questions at this time. So please, couples, let us singles have self-wallowing humor, excessive complaining, and Dancing on my Own by Robyn. We already have to get our own cheese, and quite frankly, have suffered enough.
Romance
My cousin and I have been soulmates for as long as I can remember. Yes, my cousin. Do not @ me. She is therefore my pinnacle source of romance at the moment. So, I have given us a cutesy “how’d you meet story” so that we can hang with the couples. *Clears throat.* Ahem, here we go:
My cousin Cass was born almost exactly nine months before me. When she was about the leave the womb, the Universe realized, “Fuck, she seems like she is going to sunburn really easily and is filled with too many sentimental emotions and I’m not she’ll make it through life on her own.” To rectify this, the Universe impregnated my mother with me at the exact moment Cass left my aunt’s womb. Nine months later I emerged, also disproportionately vulnerable to the sun and with an overbearing amount of sentimental emotions. In other words, we were split from the same soul and born family to get through this life together. When it is no longer illegal to marry your cousin, we will have a lavish ceremony on the beach and yes, bringing a gift from our registry will be required.
Loneliness
Ah, the elephant in the room: loneliness. It’s a bitch. I’ve mostly dealt with this by looking to Sairose Ronan. Listen, Sairose Ronan is always perfect, but there is a reason she has risen to Single Girl Icon status: her monologue on loneliness as Jo March in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Okay, let me give you some context. Jo has rejected Laurie’s proposal. She has returned home from New York City. Beth has passed away. The girl is going through it. So, she tells her mom:
“Women have minds and souls as well as hearts, ambition and talent as well as beauty, and I’m sick of being told that love is all a woman is fit for. But... I am so lonely.”
Excuse me while I snot cry all over my tissues. Jo my girl, I feel you. The loneliness is here and it’s real. And I know Hot Priest from Fleabag tells us that “love is not something weak people do” yada yada yada, but you know what I think really makes a person resilient? Having no built in companionship on a Saturday night or Sunday morning or Monday lunch break and fending for yourself. That’s understated strength.
I wish I had more profound wisdom on how to navigate loneliness as a single girl in a pandemic, but most times, all I can muster is a humbled acceptance that it is what it is. Some things in life just are. We can’t hide from it or fade it or fully fix it. But, loneliness isn’t a monolith. It gives and it takes. Being a single girl has given me both the thrill that I can lie on my bedroom floor and cry to “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia whenever I please and the guttural fear that if I can’t open my jar of lifesaving salsa, then I’m just going to be fucked and salsaless. It has also allowed me to relish the knowledge that I always have full control over the TV remote and driving playlist, which are two of the most important things we can control in life.
Other than this, I have few answers. There is little certainty in life, so I cherish the few things I know in the palm of my hands, giving myself permission to revel in the ephemeral hope and faith and love and joy that come my way. In the hope and faith and love and joy that I am able to build, one day at a time. Fifty years from now, when some youth asks me how I got through 2020, I know I will lovingly pull out my favorite photo of Nutella and I and tell them, “It was our golden year.”
<3 🥺😘
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