QuirkyAlone

I have finally figured out what I am. I am a quirkyalone.

Nope...that's not a typo...let me help you out with the official definition.

Quirkyalone: n. adj. a person who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and prefers being single to dating for the sake of dating. It’s a mindset. Quirkyalone is not anti-love. It is pro-love. It is not anti-dating. It is anti-compulsory dating. 

The idea of quirkyalone was invented by a woman named Sasha Cagen. She has written a book and has a website. The Quirkyalone movement began with a simple essay. 


Now, to many of my readers this post may seem like it came out of the clear-blue sky. I'm not one to talk much about my love life...or rather the lack there-of...at least not on the World Wide Web. However, as my 25th birthday rapidly approaches, I have become increasingly aware that well...I'm alone. A few of my closest friends have been among the unfortunate set of people whose phones have been plaugued with "woe-is me, I'm alone" text messages over the last week. 

Now just to clarify...I'm usually pretty content with my single-hood. But...well...we all have our moments...or weeks. Ha. If there's anything that I hate, it's that feeling of discontentment with things as the are, yet an inability to change things. I have been told on numerous occassions, "Well, why don't you get out there just to date around." Um...because...that's a waste of my time? Duh. What's the point in dating just for the sake of dating? I don't like the idea. And sometimes...as much I hate going home after an evening out with friends to an empty apartment...I would prefer that to dating someone that I merely tolerate just because I don't want to be alone. 


It's a weird existence. A Catch-22 of sorts. The inevitable lonlieness that is a natural part of being single...and the incredible freedom of not settling either.


I would like to be in a relationship. In fact, I love being in relationships...but is it too much to want fireworks? Or at least a little bit of lightning? Ha. Nope. I think not and guess what? I won't settle for less. 


That being said, I officially dub myself a quirkyalone. 


And if Mr. Right comes along sometime soon...no one will be more surprised than me!

Below I've added the excerpt of Sasha Cagen's original essay. Pay attention...it could be you!

People Like Us: The Quirkyalones
by Sasha Cagen

I am, perhaps, what you might call deeply single. Almost never ever in a relationship. Until recently, I wondered whether there might be something weird about me. But then lonely romantics began to grace the covers of TV Guide and Mademoiselle. From Ally McBeal to Sex in the City, a spotlight came to shine on the forever single. If these shows had touched such a nerve in our culture, I began to think, perhaps I was not so alone after all.

The morning after New Year’s Eve (another kissless one, of course), a certain jumble of syllables came to me. When I told my friends about my idea, their faces lit up with instant recognition: the quirkyalone.

If Jung was right, that people are different in fundamental ways that drive them from within, then the quirkyalone is simply to be added to the pantheon of personality types assembled over the 20th century. Only now, when the idea of marrying at age 20 has become thoroughly passé, are we quirkyalones emerging in greater numbers.

We are the puzzle pieces who seldom fit with other puzzle pieces. Romantics, idealists, eccentrics, we inhabit singledom as our natural resting state. In a world where proms and marriage define the social order, we are, by force of our personalities and inner strength, rebels.

For the quirkyalone, there is no patience for dating just for the sake of not being alone. We want a miracle. Out of millions, we have to find the one who will understand.

Better to be untethered and open to possibility: living for the exhilaration of meeting someone new, of not knowing what the night will bring. We quirkyalones seek momentous meetings.

By the same token, being alone is understood as a wellspring of feeling and experience. There is a bittersweet fondness for silence. 

Sometimes, though, we wonder whether we have painted ourselves into a corner. Standards that started out high only become higher once you realize the contours of this existence. When we do find a match, we verge on obsessive—or we resist.

And so, a community of like-minded souls is essential.

Since fellow quirkyalones are not abundant (we are probably less than 5 percent of the population), I recommend reading the patron saint of solitude: German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Even 100 years after its publication, Letters to a Young Poet still feels like it was written for us: “You should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to break out of it,” Rilke writes. “People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of easy, but it is clear that we must hold to that which is difficult.”

Rilke is right. Being quirkyalone can be difficult. Everyone else is part of a couple! Still, there are advantages. No one can take our lives away by breaking up with us. Instead of sacrificing our social constellation for the one all-consuming individual, we seek empathy from friends. We have significant others.

And so, when my friend asks me whether being quirkyalone is a life sentence, I say, yes, at the core, one is always quirkyalone. But when one quirkyalone finds another, oooh la la. The earth quakes.

—From To-Do List, July 2000, and Utne Reader, September 2000.

What do you think? Could that be you too?