A Most Useless Place

My roommate ended up having to have her gallbladder removed, so I spent a lot of time yesterday in the waiting room at the hospital. As I sat there, I couldn't help but think of a page out of one of my all time favorite books, Dr. Seuss's Oh The Places You'll Go. (There was one point when the fire alarm went off for about 20 minutes, fire trucks came, and fully-suited firemen walked into the hospital. During this, I thought, "Wow. Doctors and firemen in one place--it's a girl's dream.) The page talks about how sometimes in life you end up in a most useless place, the Waiting Place. And as I thought about it, I couldn't help but think that that is how so many people view singleness, as a waiting place.

When I was younger, my life plan looked something like this: High School, College, Get Married. There was no place in my life map for being single. If fact, if you ask most girls when they're young, I don't think they would include Single Time in their long-term plans. Because of this, I think we have started to think that being single is just an in-between time, like it's the time between college graduation and wedding day, when the next part of life starts. As a single person, there is elevator music playing in the background of your life, and you just hang out waiting until some guy's voice interrupts the music on the other end.

This, I thought, is no way to live. Why live like my life is on pause and only Mr. Right can come pick up the remote and hit play (while I'm talking about remotes, I must say one great thing about being single is having control over my remote)? Unlike the waiting room at the hospital where all I could do was sit around helpless until a phone rang to give me an update on my roommate or until someone came out to tell her family what was going on, my personal waiting room was something I was completely capable of getting up and walking out of. I could pick up my remote and press play. And that's what this year is about for me--pressing play.

So here's hoping my future husband didn't just stumble into the Waiting Place looking for me because I'm not there anymore. If he wants to find me now, he'll have to go out and look for me. Because I'm not waiting anymore. I'm off to great places. I'm off and away.