I’m 24 and I’m single, and I think the hardest part isn’t actually being single—it’s the way it makes me think about myself when no one is around.
There are days I try to act normal about it. Like it doesn’t bother me. Like I’m just “focused on myself” or “waiting for the right time.” But if I’m being honest, there’s this quiet ache underneath all of that. Not loud enough to scream, just constant enough to sit in the background of everything I do.
I see people my age falling in love so casually. Holding hands in public. Talking about someone like they’re their person. And I feel happy for them, I really do… but I also feel like I’m watching something I’m not really part of. Like there’s this invisible barrier between me and that kind of life, and I don’t know how to cross it.
The truth is, I don’t even let myself fully hope for it.
I have a disability, and I live in a body that doesn’t fit the kind of softness or “desirability” I see celebrated everywhere. I’ve learned how people look at me. Not always cruelly, but differently. Carefully. Sometimes with curiosity, sometimes with hesitation, sometimes like I’m something they’re trying to be kind about.
And over time, that starts to get into your head.
I start thinking: if someone liked me, would it stay that way once they saw everything? Once it wasn’t just conversations and distance, but real life, real body, real limitations, real me?
So I don’t open doors. I don’t flirt back properly. I don’t let things grow too far. I convince myself I’m just being “realistic,” but maybe it’s also fear. Fear of being seen completely and then quietly put away later.
It messes with how I see myself too.
Some days I feel like I don’t really qualify for love the way other people do. Like love is something people earn by being easier to love—lighter, more able, more effortless to look at and choose. And I look at myself and I can’t help but think I fall outside that category.
I know that’s probably not a fair thought. I know logically people fall in love in all kinds of bodies, all kinds of lives. But feelings aren’t always logical, and mine have been shaped by years of comparison, small comments, reactions, and silence where I expected warmth.
So I stay in this in-between place. Wanting connection, but stepping back before it can become real. Hoping someone will choose me, but not fully believing they should.
And maybe that’s the part I struggle with the most—not just being single, but the way I’ve started to doubt that I’m someone who could be chosen without hesitation.
Still, somewhere underneath all of that, there’s a small part of me that hasn’t fully given up on the idea that I might be wrong about myself. That I might not be as “hard to love” as I’ve convinced myself I am.
I just don’t know how to believe that yet.