Disc never lies.

There’s this thing we do. I think it is a profoundly human thing to do, so human and so fundamental that only the saints and enlightened are free of it. I believe humans feel a constant need for reasons, and for cause and effect. Much of that type of thinking, a ferocious need for reasons is incredibly useful. It keeps us from being eaten by lions and teaches us to wash our hands before surgery and can be combined into fabulous heavy machinery. But there is also a space where that type of thinking gets turned on each other and ourselves; in that space, hunting for reasons not just pointless, it is destructive and hurtful.

If you need reasons and you need justice to exist in the world, your mind will make both up. Did someone fall sick? There must have been a cause, like his diet, or her decision to live near a factory, or not taking care of himself, or maybe just impure thoughts. Is someone poor? There must be an internal cause, like laziness, or bad judgment, or some choice you would never make, like being born to the wrong parents. Did she get raped? There must have been something, something she wore or someplace she was, or something, something, something that you can refuse to do, so rape will never happen to you. In our human minds, the existence of a bad outcome is enough to prove that there must have been a reason, and knowing that reason can keep you safe from that fate.

This thinking is bad enough. It lets us condemn and hold people that bad things happen to separate from us. It gives us a false sense of control. Our constant habit of finding fault requires constant reminders; wonderful people fall sick and suffer; decent people never have opportunities; she did nothing wrong; chance is not justice. But there is another way this hunt for causes can send us wrong and that is when we turn it on ourselves.

As I’ve been single for longer and longer, I become more and more desperate for a reason, something I could change about me, anything I could fix so that I could please not have to do this on my own anymore. Fixing whatever thing about me is broken, so that men keep not choosing me, would be worth nearly any effort. On the nights when I’m scared, I’ll run through every old encounter, looking for the thing I did wrong, or the thing he said that would tell me what would make me a person that someone would marry. ‘Cause shit, if I could find that, I could make this all better. And friends, let me tell you, the world is fast to tell a girl that broken thing is her weight.

Here is the secret, friends. There is nothing wrong with me, not my looks, not my demands or beliefs. I am single by the chance of not meeting someone I could love at a time when he could love me. That’s all. There is nothing I can fix or do better. This is hard to believe about oneself, but here’s a trick. It is easy to see in your friends. On any day, I can look at my stunning friends and think “She is such a beautiful, phenomenal person. There is no explanation for why she isn’t extravagantly loved.” Reader, I can even say that about you. Please, if you do this, this hunt for the wrong thing about you, stop and be gentle to yourself. Be as gentle to yourself as you would to the people around you. Be your best self and show her to the world. When you are loved, it will be for the person you already are.




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I should have said when I first posted it that I've come to this line of thinking out of conversations with Chris and with Sherry. The good parts are probably from them.