I forgot to get a girlfriend before the end of the world.

It wasn't supposed to be this hard.

As you may (or, if you’re a sane person with a rich social life, may not) be aware, Twitter is apparently in its death throes: the bulk of the engineering team has quit, crucial departments are utterly unstaffed, everyone’s just holding their breath until one major (or minor) earthquake leaves the whole house in rubble. It’s led to an odd mood, the sort of joyous panic you see at the untimely end of something significant. Last call to confess your sins, hug your loved ones, relive your best memories, make that Hail Mary date invitation to your crush.

Last call to get a girlfriend.

Did I actually think I was going to get a girlfriend via Twitter? I mean, not really, except maybe sort of. Mostly in the idle way I see every social outing as an opportunity to potentially meet a woman I might date, the way I psych myself up to go to parties by reminding myself that this might be it, the moment I meet my future wife. But the end times vibe nevertheless has me feeling introspective, you know? You always expect to be in a different place when something comes to an end: that you’ll have had your first kiss by the end of high school, that you’ll know who you want to be by the end of college, that you’ll be happily partnered when your favorite social media platform collapses into a heap of rubble.

I don’t bring this up just to whine about my own sad excuse for a romantic life, though. I do have a larger point, I promise — though it’s going to take me a minute to get to it. Because the first thing I need to say is that part of what makes this unexpectedly long dry spell so uncomfortable, aside from the general desire to, you know, not be alone, is that it wasn’t supposed to play out like this. It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult.

Back in the summer of 2020, back when I first committed to prioritizing dating women over men, to exclusively dating women, to embracing rather than running from my tender homoromantic heart, I thought it was all going to be as simple as making a declaration. The revelation itself was supposed to be the hard part, right? Once you had worked up the courage to come out, the world was supposed to unfold in front of you, grant you all the happiness you’d been afraid to admit you desired.

And seeing how this was my second coming out, well — it was supposed to just work out for me, right? I’d known since 14 that I was a queer woman, now at 37 I was accepting the contours of what that queerness really meant for me, opening myself up to the true nature of what it was that I wanted. That was supposed to be the biggest hurdle, right? Once I started trying, once I started “putting myself out there,” love was just supposed to come, right?

And yet. I am now forty and I’m no more wifed up than I was at fourteen. And yes, it’s still a pandemic, which throws a crimp into things, and yes, I’m middle-aged and thus less likely to hit the clurb even in non-pandemic times, and yes and yes and yes — there are lots of reasons you can toss out to explain my extended stretch of singledom. But none of them will ever fully quiet the voice in the back of my brain that shouts, “It wasn’t supposed to be this hard!”

Because — and here is me arriving to my actual point — one of the hardest things about being a single queer person is that so much of queer community, queer identity, is structured around queerness as an action, not simply an identity. One actualizes one’s queerness by dating, or at least fucking, someone of one’s own gender; and if you’re not doing that, well, are you sure you’re actually queer? It’s especially fraught for the bisexuals, of course, who face the pressure to deliver a sexual resume with a 50/50 gender breakdown; if you haven’t had equal amounts of queer sex and straight sex, well, where do you get off calling yourself bi, you know?

It’s a point that often gets made by people who landed in committed monogamous relationships before they keyed in to their own bisexuality. But it’s one that sticks with me as a sad singleton as well, even one who has dated women in her life (just, you know, not in many, many years). I sometimes joke that I’m not straight, I’m just unlikeable; unable to fully realize my own queerness not because I lack the desire, but because I just totally suck as a person. It’s a joke, but it’s also kind of true*: when your queerness is stuck at the desire stage, when it’s a want rather than an experience, you are often left feeling like half a person, stuck in limbo, a larva struggling to reach maturity.

This is, I think, the point at which I’m supposed to segue into a pep talk, to tell you that you’re enough, that I’m enough, that our queerness is self-evident in its declaration. And I mean, sure. That’s all true, and it’s all important to say, and if it gives you comfort, great.

But I think what I actually want to end on here is not some pat reassurance, some feel goodism, but rather a question: what does it say about queerness that it so neatly replicates the hetero idea that you are — if you’ll allow me this one — nobody until somebody loves you? Why do we continue to promote this message that we, alone, are not enough? Why do we make it seem as though finding queer love is as simple as announcing an intent to experience queer relationships? And for anyone who’s stuck where I am — too tired for casual sex, too picky and too much of a niche taste to easily land a partner — well, how are we supposed to feel embodied in our queerness in a culture that continually tells us that we are nothing more than half-baked?

* Not the me sucking part**

** Okay maybe the me sucking part is true

PS So if Twitter goes down for really real I am kinda going to be losing my best venue to (badly) promote this newsletter, so here’s a plea of sorts: if you like what I’m doing, if you think this newsletter has value, please tell folks! Post about me, pitch stories about me, include me in your list of newsletters to follow. I’m still in the mid 600 subscribers area, and I’d love to get to four (hell, maybe even five!) figures at some point, and you — yes you! — can definitely help with that.