Soft Mourning Everything That Never Happened
The value of admitting hard things.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver.
Cheaper Than Therapy Readers: May is Mental Health Awareness Month and while I typically don’t theme my content much, now seemed like a good time for this. Women’s singlehood is a mental health issue. Dating is a mental health issue. Loneliness is a mental health issue. For me, wanting something and never getting it is a massive mental health issue. You deserve people and spaces that validate life as you’re living it. I hope I’m one of them.
The concept of “never” is a puzzle that’s fighting back. “Never” never stops moving, changing, and evolving our own understanding of time. Some people think the dreams they had for their lives haven’t “never” happened until they die. Other people get tired of dreaming of someday and need to feel their feelings right now. I think my “never” is right now.
You decide what your never is, I think. Once you get tired, like soul tired, of endless waiting, hoping, going with the flow, trusting, trying, meditating, reworking, replanning, adjusting, trying again, waiting again, hoping again, trusting again—when you just can’t fucking do that anymore because it makes you feel like an idiot, or you’re utterly exhausted, or you’re just completely bored…that’s when “never” is. The things I want for myself are not absurd things, we’re not living in an era that’s allowed to dream of princes and castles. We’re living in an era where good dates and decent apartments are one in a million. For a generation of single women, I think never is now, and I think softly mourning everything we didn’t get but watched other people get over and over again is the very least we can do. I have to try, because I don’t feel well. If I don’t feel well, there’s a chance someone reading this feels the same.