Three Sentences On Insignificant Others

I’m on the L train and I’m looking at this girl’s huge engagement ring and I can’t help but think how crazy it is that she had to have met someone—one (1) person—and hung out with them consistently for a long enough period of time until they both sat down and discussed maybe continuing doing what they were doing forever and whoever gave her that ring was like, yes, let me literally spend money on this piece of jewelry that you will wear forever and let’s invite all our friends and family to a celebration of us wanting this to last forever and we will dance and one of our cousins will give us a toaster or a juicer or something and then we will live together and come home to each other every single day for the rest of our lives and your friends will now be our friends and my friends will now be our friends and our families will now be just one family and then we will die.

And I just can’t help but think oh my god oh my god oh my god I simultaneously love so many people and also don’t love anyone at all—but not in a sad and lonely way but in a way where I only have insignificant others and the thought of forever with one (1) person (even myself) exhausts me and bores me and scares me all at once—and I just can’t fathom this being in my future and a reality in which I exist and am content with existing and I had mentioned this to my friend the other day at dinner and she just kept asking me: you don’t want kids? you don’t want to get married? you don’t have anyone you could see yourself doing either with? and I told her I wasn’t sure how I’d feel later but definitely not now and definitely not anytime soon and she looked at me and said wow that is so cool.

I’ve been told I will grow out of this phase or that I will meet someone Significant or that I will eventually settle or that maybe I will end up living with a bunch of cats but the thing is I don’t think this is a phase because I think this is me and I meet Significant people all the time I just don’t want to be attached to only one (1) of them and I’d be so bummed out if I had to settle and also I think I’m allergic to cats.