I’m here to tell you friends, that you WILL encounter many pitfalls in navigating through the process of being single in your 40s. The early stages, the rookie mistakes and the perilous mid 40s makeover.
But you will prevail. I promise. Onwards and upwards.
However there are a few things that can set you right back, hurtling you back into the vodka-as-a-food-group mindset of the newly bereft.
A stellar example would be your ex getting re-married. This will no doubt have you scuttling to Adele and trilling ‘I heard that your dreeeeams came true” Often. Emotionally. In the shower (which is like space – where no one can hear you scream)
Not quite up there, but certainly unsettling….
Being Single At Your High School Re-Union.
Odds are, that at the moment that you finally congratulate yourself at having achieved a level of stability, the demon incarnate that is Facebook will poke you with a stab as pointy as the shiv of the incarcerated with a little prompter about your upcoming High School Reunion.
But like the wingwoman that I am, I’m here to tell you….
….you’ve got this.
Here’s the 40schick guide to surviving the high school reunion as a singleton.
One – its not the 80s anymore
Take a moment to revisit the horrors of fashions past. You are not going out in public garbed in:
- The horrors of taffeta
- The insanity of lace gloves (amped up exponentially if they were fingerless)
- A slick of blue crème eyeshadow that gummed up your eyelids like an intense case of conjunctivitis
Instead you are quite likely to rock a skinny jean with a slinky top, a pair of Milanese suede boots that cost about half of your 1975 first-car-Torana and no doubt an improvement in hairstyle.
Single or not, you are going to feel way better about yourself than you did when rocking a bad 80s home perm.
Two – the hot guy has probably deteriorated
When you were the geekster with glasses and an embarrassing ability to analyse Shakespeare, you no-doubt had a teenage yearning for the football jock who grew tall, filled out and sauntered through the school with all the model-bagging confidence of a young Leonardo DeCaprio.
Shortly after arrival at said reunion, you will be doing an internal happy dance to realise that he’s experienced an early onset pattern baldness and an Achilles injury that has curtailed a potential career and has had his beer carbs redirected to his belly.
Three – the cool girls have plateaued
The girls that smoked brazenly in the girls toilets? The girls that had the ability to crook a Cutex-home-manicured finger and reel in the top-percenter guys in class? They’ve become an unwitting poster girl for the effects of smoking for thirty years, are experiencing the logistical challenge of navigating the child-support arrangements that result from the spawn of multiple partners and somehow their life seems a little more complicated than yours. (if that is possible)
Four – you can count the bullets you escaped
Oh yes, you could be married at this point.
You could be married to the moody musician that became a life-long stoner.
In some alternate universe you could have had your crush on the Phys Ed teacher turn into reality – in which universe you would now be married to someone 60plus that was now well instituted into the wearing of polyester tracksuits.
Five – there is alcohol
…and unlike the late 80s, where your access to alcohol relied on:
- swiping swigs of your beer-drinking Dad’s unloved Christmas-present-bottle of Johnny Walker
- that manipulated birth certificate, artfully mocked up on your Olivetti then bathed in a wash of blue food dye (80s kids know precisely what I mean)
this time round, its perfectly legit, and this time round you are unlikely to end up in the school sick bay after the year 12 social, claiming migraine-induced projectile vomiting.
Just sayin…..
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