Ever notice how singledom goes in cycles?

After a relationship, there's obviously the mourning period (even if you were the one that ended it). You miss having the stability, the familiar face, the voice that doesn't need to identify itself, the comfort.

Sooner or later, you get that feeling of relief and freedom. You aren't tied down! You don't have to spend time with the other's family or friends. You can spend the entire Saturday night eating ice cream if you want. And you don't have to run it past anyone! You don't have to do a perfunctory Saturday Night Couples Activity (get your heads out of the gutter; I'm talking about social things like movies, dinner, clubs, whatever).

Eventually, the shine of solidarity wears off a bit and your eyes open up to the multitude of attractive people around you. Ooh, look over there. You flirt, you hope, maybe you start dating again.

Soon enough, that scene gets old and you start looking at those cuties more and more often. You hope that one of them is really great and you start daydreaming about them, but of course you get really disappointed when they don't pay you enough attention. You know they're already taken, but you can't help that little seed of hope that they'll see the light in you.

You start getting lonely. You start feeling extra, truly alone. You long for a familiar face again, for inside jokes, for someone to scratch your back without being asked, for a steady date each weekend. You feel bitter when your friends are in a happy relationship--or in a relationship at all. Romantic comedies make you sigh with hope but glare with disappointment that it's not you being swept away by a handsome, dashing, funny man. You wonder what is wrong with you. Why doesn't anyone see the gorgeous princess you know you are? Ha, yeah right, what a horrible monster you must be; that's why you're single! That must be the reason. You wistfully think about past lovers and paramours and flirtations, and you wonder where it all went wrong with each of them. You wonder why that one cutie three years ago never called you when clearly there was a real connection between you. You might even contemplate calling or emailing your ex, to reassure yourself that at one point, you were both lovable and loved.

So you sit at home on the weekends, being dull and boring and you ache for companionship. You would give anything to have a warm pair of arms to wrap around you at the end of a long and frustrating day, to get out and see all those great movies that keep coming out, to hang out in new and different bars, to go to all the restaurants you've only heard about. You feel like this solitude will imprison you for the rest of time, that nothing can and nobody will rescue you.

You know that it's just part of the cycle, you've been here before and you'll be here again, but still and nonetheless, it feels interminable. And it really and truly and utterly sucks.