‘Single’, the card read. ‘Picked the wrong guy, gave him the wrong finger. Thanks for your support’.
With such elegant sentiments, it was hard to resist the latest website to spring from the woman scorned category (note to ex-boyfriends – watch this space): www.otherannouncements.com.
The author of the website is Diana Farr, a woman who was unceremoniously dumped by her fiancé six weeks after the engagement cards were sent out. After a decent amount of time wallowing, Diana decided to turn her tragedy into comedy by forming a card company with a friend.
The name of the company? Other Announcements – for those moments in life that you fervently wish will never happen to you, but do anyway. Farr’s cards have proved a booming success and she has appeared on ‘Oprah Winfrey’ and ‘Carson Daly’.
It’s hard coming out of a relationship and coming into your own. ‘Single’ is such a difficult term to swallow, especially when you have songs that whine ‘one is the loneliest number’ and celebrities like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton declaring, dewy-eyed that they may have all the millions in the world but it all ain’t worth a dime if they didn’t have their widdle Kevin/Paris. Please, shut up already.
We at the nzgirl team have collectively (and individually) been single longer than we have been in relationships. Some of us have learned the hard way that being single is far better than being with say, a ‘P’ addict or amateur Greenpeace hippy – NO, we don’t have to protest at the way fish are killed in Japanese restaurants… can’t we just eat the damn sashimi for once?
So many people settle for less than what they deserve. Girls go out with guys they know will be train wrecks in a relationship the minute their eyes meet across a crowded room.
They stick by men who are really boys – men who spend all their time getting high, unemployed bums, emotional black holes, Playstation/Xbox/PC game freaks (his other woman is a troll), men who follow the call of their little friend (you know which one I’m talking about), men who won’t commit even after years together… some of the stories are just too painful to repeat.
But sometimes society can be really crappy to singles. Studies have proven that couples live longer than singles and singles have to shell out twice as much money as couples for things like flats, dinners, etc.
It’s also hard to be lonely in the middle of the night, to receive your smug coupled friend’s pitiful looks and to be set up by random work colleagues with the guy they think will be just PERFECT for you but who really turns out to be Harry the postman who has a secret fetish for women’s silk panties.
Then there’s the parental factor: your mother moaning ‘when I was your age, I had four boyfriends on the go and ten on the back burner’ or your Dad saying ‘you can come live with us, luv, if you get too lonely’.
Don’t despair. Things do get better, as the cliché goes, and little by little, you learn the peace and contentment that comes from knowing the only person you have to worry about is you.
And most importantly, if you are single, you are free to travel. I have never known any single person who travelled alone and regretted it. If you’ve just come out of a relationship, strap on your backpack and take on the world, or even just New Zealand.
Eat oysters at the Bluff, drink beer in Florence, buy a beret in Paris, paint on the sidewalk in Barcelona, eat roasted chesnuts in China, get a hand-massage from a blind masseuse in Cambodia – just do it.
As Oscar Wilde once said: ‘to fall in love with oneself 
is the beginning of a lifelong love affair’.
So today, just for me, all the singles in the world should kick off those boots and revel in the fact that there’s no one to complain about your smelly feet.
To be single, is to have the right to be uniquely, unabashedly you.
Karen Tay
