'Single life is beautiful, actually. But it's also a full-time job no one warns you about.'

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Being single is a lot of things.

It's empowering. It's peaceful. It's chaotic and spontaneous and sometimes absolutely feral.

It's the freedom to stretch diagonally across your bed with all four limbs in a starfish formation. It's blasting Gracie Abrams in your kitchen while wearing an oversized t-shirt that says "emotionally unavailable but trying".

It's learning to hold your own hand and to like your own company and to become the person who lights their own candle and pours their own wine and buys their own damn bedside table (and assembles it, too).

But can I tell you a secret?

Watch: The dating experience women keep having. Post continues below.

Sometimes, being single is… hard.

Not in a "boo hoo, I'm so lonely" way. But the kind of hard that kind of feels like the universe has a bit of a sick sense of humour and you're its new favourite toy. It's the type of hard that sneaks up in the deeply mundane and smallest of moments.

Like trying to decide what to cook for dinner every single night and realising everything at the supermarket is portioned for couples or families of five. So you end up making a "serves four" curry that you'll be eating until you never want to see another chickpea ever again.

Or opening a bottle of wine on a Thursday night because you deserve it, only to feel weird about drinking more than one glass because "it's just me". Then that half-bottle sits in your fridge like a shrivelled metaphor for your dating life: unfinished and rapidly oxidising.

Or the rush of pride when your new dining table arrives — because look at you! You are a capable, independent woman! — immediately followed by a soul-crushing line in the instruction manual that reads: "This assembly requires two people."

Cool. Love that for me.

FML. Image: Supplied.

It's calling your internet provider about a fault and being placed on hold for 43 minutes, all while googling "why is my ceiling wet" and texting your landlord a photo of your dishwasher that simply refuses to drain and attempting to work from home at the same time. 

It's remembering to put the bins out and to book the annual pest spray and follow up with the electrician about the light that's been flickering in the bathroom like you're in a budget horror movie.

It's being both the emotional support human and the one who replaces the smoke alarm battery when it starts making those weird beeping sounds in the middle of the night.

It's learning to navigate the kind of exhaustion that doesn't come from work or busyness — but from knowing that everything in your life gets done (or… doesn't) because you do it. 

Sometimes it's walking home from the bus stop after a long day feeling brave and independent and feminist, but wishing, for just one tiny second, that someone was inside waiting for you. That someone had already lit your favourite candle and poured you a glass of wine. That someone had saved you the last piece of garlic bread even though technically, you said you didn't want any (but they knew you were lying).

That someone existed in your life without needing to be summoned via a cursed dating app.

Sometimes, single life looks like the left. Other times, it looks like the right. Swings and roundabouts… Image: Supplied.

Single life can, of course be full — of friends and plans and growth and Taylor Swift lyrics you scream inside your car — but it also comes with silence. With stillness. With nights that are so quiet they ring just a little.

Being single is knowing that you can do it all yourself but wishing, just sometimes, that you didn't have to.

It's beautiful. And brutal. And boring. And bold. And occasionally so unhinged that all you can do in response is laugh.

It's taking yourself out to dinner and ordering a starter and a main because, why not, treat yourself — and then seeing a couple next to you sharing a dessert with two spoons and feeling a pang so sharp it makes your eyes water.

It's mastering the art of reaching the zipper at the back of your dress by contorting your shoulder like a gymnast. And then booking a physio appointment before work because you obviously pulled a muscle while doing so (and there's no one around to rub on some Fisiocrem before bed).

It's realising the only reason your olive oil runs out is because you dropped it on the floor, panicked and had to mop it up with paper towel and tears.

It's watching a terrifying movie trailer on Netflix and then having to sleep with the hallway light on because there is no one else here to protect you from the demons.

It's strength and softness and "holy sh*t, I'm really doing this by myself."

It's also texting your friend to ask if they want to split a watermelon because why are they so goddamn big? Who is buying these?

So yes. This is a love letter to single life. But love — real love — includes honesty. And I won't lie: some days, this gig is hard.

But you keep going and you keep showing up. You keep figuring it out, one unevenly portioned dinner at a time.

And if all else fails…You eat the four-person curry and call it meal prep.

Feature image: Supplied.