Eliza Bennet
After the painful divorce of her first marriage, my grandmother found herself as the single mother of three children. For a while, she didn’t have the time or money to think about herself or finding someone new. But, when her kids were a little older and she had a steady job to rely on, she took the time to search for that someone. And eventually she found not one, not two, but five someones before settling down with my step-grandfather while in her late fifties.
In this era full of constant exposure to social media, it’s hard not to compare our lives to those we see on our feeds and timelines. I, myself, am guilty of judging my personal and professional accomplishments against those of my peers. And as I go into my twenties, I am seeing more and more posts about engagements, weddings and even babies. Now, I am definitely not ready to be married or even engaged, but like most, it still pangs my heart when I see what seems like the rest of the world succeeding in love while I’m still single.
The habit of measuring our love lives against others’ is instinctual and hard to break. But problems arise when we let these instincts take over our thoughts and we convince ourselves that the reason we don’t have a significant other or that our significant other isn’t romantic enough, loving enough, compassionate enough, is because we are not enough. This thought pattern can be harmful and when we do find someone, can cause us to become jaded and closed off.
What I have come to learn is that love does not follow a timeline. People often say that love comes when you least expect it, and while that may be true, we shouldn’t feel ashamed for expecting either. Humans are built to love. We love our family, our friends, our pets, and hopefully, ourselves. It’s okay to want to love someone romantically and to want to be in a relationship. It’s also okay not too. And it’s okay to change your mind.
After her death in 2018, my mother found love letters addressed to my grandmother from her many suitors. One was a pilot, one was an elementary school teacher, and one was a businessman from Alberta. There are pages and pages of old-school, lovey-dovey (and sometimes sensual) declarations of affection. Unfortunately, we don’t have her reply letters, but I’d like to think that somewhere the grandchildren of that pilot, teacher, and businessman are reading her letters and wondering who this woman was. From the age of fifteen to forty, my grandmother had only known one love. But when the time came to open up her heart again, her love knew no bounds.
In spirit of my grandmother, I believe that we are capable of having many loves in our lives, whether romantic or platonic, whether overlapping or consecutive. I have to believe this in order to not get discouraged by the endless couples posts I see on my feeds. So, if I have to wait until I am forty, fifty or even sixty before I find my someone(s), well, I’ll just have to believe that they’re worth the wait.
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