Confessions of an Amoeba Pringle Man

Our theme for the month of June is “confessions.”

Confession: I refuse to take seriously people who quote themselves. I wasn’t on Reddit when an r/atheism user tried and failed to channel the spirits of Bertrand Russell and Christopher Hitchens, but if I had, I would have joined in the Internet’s collective cringe giggle.

Second confession: I don’t like to dwell on the post I wrote back in January, “A Letter to the 70,000.” I don’t regret writing it—the complete opposite, actually—but I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m not fond of reminiscing about the couple of weeks I spent penning an open letter to a legion of Schrodinger’s sex offenders.

I’ll now offend my own sensibilities by quoting myself in “A Letter to the 70,000”:

[about being single in college] Sometimes I felt like I was physically lacking something, like my body was a puzzle and the pieces that made me relationship material were missing. Sometimes I felt like I stood in front of a whiteboard, trying to solve an equation that everyone around me had solved long ago. […]  Sometimes, I’d look at myself in the mirror and wonder if my brown skin was the real difference between me and my friends in relationships, not my social skills or my confidence.

This leads into my third confession: those sentences shouldn’t be in past tense. I’m single as an amoeba’s cell, single as a Pringle. It frequently bothers me, and there’s a part of me that thinks I’m never going to find a girlfriend or a wife.

Which leads into my fourth confession: I don’t talk about this.

A lot of people don’t want to hear out guys for whom being single is a sore spot. Not that I can blame them, especially women. Many women have learned that when single guys despair over their singleness, their words have an unspoken follow-up:

“I’m single [and I’m going to shoot up a sorority house because of it].”

“Girls don’t like me [but it doesn’t matter, because Andrew Tate says women only want me for my money]!”

“I’m going to die alone [so I’ll vote for this politician who wants to make divorce illegal].”

Not every guy who says they’re single and don’t want to be has those connotations, but enough of them do that I worry about being lumped in with them if I ever bring up my lack of a relationship status. There’s probably a way to talk with other people about it and not come off like I’m smoking that bitter entitled pack, but I haven’t found it.

Besides feeling like I wrap myself in a red flag if I talk about not being boo’d up, I’ve run out of patience for the canned responses the perpetually single hear regularly:

“Be yourself!” (I do; that’s seemingly the problem.)

“Plenty of fish in the sea.” (Great. I have no fishing rod or bait and I’m in an oarless rowboat surrounded by trawlers.)

“Work on yourself.” (What do you think I’ve been doing?)

“It’ll happen when you least expect it.” (I’m at the point where a not-single me feels as incomprehensible as one of Lovecraft’s Old Gods or a round triangle. If that was true, it would have happened by now.)

So, I keep it in. The only places I express jealousy or envy towards my friends who are dating/married are in my journal or in my prayers. I linger on TikToks where fellow chronically single people vent their frustrations, TikToks I only watch when no one’s around.  And…I try to be someone worth dating or marrying.

Not that it matters.

I said earlier I’m all burned out on platitudes. The one that most bothers me is when people tell me relationships are overrated and/or that I should be thankful for being single. I know there are good intentions behind statements like that, and that it’s not completely wrong. Seeing how I’ve been single my whole life, every good thing in my life—studying abroad, meeting my best friends, finding a job I like, making a serious attempt at a novel—has happened without a partner at my side. I know I could be single from now until the day I die and live a great life.

I also know that tomorrow I could cut ties with my best friend Brooke, swear off Mexican food, or give up on my ambitions of getting published, and live a good, long life. But I don’t want to. Best friends, good food, and creative writing aren’t needs, they’re wants. So is a relationship.

I want to shut up the taunting voice in my head constantly repeating the same if-then statement: women date men they’re attracted to. You’ve never had a girlfriend or even been on a date. If women don’t date you, then you’re not attractive. 

I want to love someone and be loved.

I want to stop empathizing with that girl on TikTok who stitched cute couple videos and then cut to her breaking a stick in frustration while shouting “When. Will. It. Be. My. Turn?!?” (Fun fact: she got married earlier this year.)

I want to determine for myself whether relationships are overrated by, you know, being in one.

I want this feeling of defectiveness, that I can’t do what comes to seemingly everyone around me naturally, to go away.

I want to rip up the mental list of possible reasons I am unattractive: is it because I’m black? Is it because I’m autistic? Is it because I have a terrible sense of personal space? Have I spent the last decade nose-blind to my smelling like an overflowing septic tank? 

But I also don’t want to give in to cynicism.

In the comment sections of those chronically single TikToks, I find a lot of people saying they’re Forever Alone, that they’ve given up on love, sharing stories of the rejections and brush-offs that acted as the straw (or sometimes, the falling anvil) that broke the camel’s back. I could throw my own woes in the arena: I’ve been ghosted, gotten the ‘let’s be friends’ speech, had a girl I asked out tell me she wasn’t looking for a relationship and then get a new boyfriend days later. When that taunting voice takes a break from its favorite if-then statement, it’ll pull me back into those thornbush memories.

But cynicism, bitterness, resignation, they’re ouroboroses, self-fulfilling prophecies. If I want to one day stop being Amoeba Pringle Man, snarky comments about being dateless, blaming women for not dating me, or regaling those embarrassing rejections for pity will get me the exact opposite result that I want.

So my confession is done. Brooke is still my best friend, I’m going to eat a quesadilla first chance I get, I’m going to finish my novel and send out short stories, and I’m not going to throw in the towel when it comes to trying to find that special someone.

Come back next month when I do something I’ve definitely never done before, like talk about books or mention Brooke is my best friend or start my post off with a seemingly-random aside and then tie it to next month’s subject.

Confession booth–er, post–closed.