Before you begin reading this article, there are a few things I would like you to know: 1) This article is not meant to speak poorly of those in a relationship. If you're happy with your boyfriend/girlfriend, that's great. Absolutely no sarcasm. 2) This is not meant to make anyone feel sorry for me or others that are single. Personally, I choose to be optimistic about my being single. 3) Lastly, I would like you to find humor in this article. Because me chauffeuring a couple in my back seat not funny? But more on that later...

Now that we have that out of the way, here goes:

In just over a month, I will be twenty years old. No longer will I be a teenager, or a freshman in college. I'll still be living with my parents over break, but that's beside the point. I've done a lot in my near twenty years here on Earth. I've attended junior high Valentine's Day dances where I sat on the bleachers during the slow songs with no one to dance with. I've survived high school homecomings without a boyfriend's football jersey to sport, proms where my date was a friend, a prom where my date ditched me during the first slow dance, and now a complete year of college . . . What do all these things have in common? I've done all these things without having a boyfriend or being asked on a date. Most girls that come from small towns had at least one boyfriend in high school - not me. I never walked down the hallways of my school as the hot girl or was I ever the senior the freshmen boys whispered about. I've attended parties where guys were far more interested in my friends than me and even somehow managed to drive a couple in my backseat to Sonic at midnight one fall in high school. I chose to attend an all-women's college, but even if I hadn't, I have a feeling things wouldn't be much different.

This used to hurt me deeply. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I used to lay in my bed every Friday and Saturday night wondering why my phone wasn't lighting up with a text from some, any, boy. Was I that ugly? Sure I wasn't as thin as some girls in my grade, and I was much more a Phyllis Diller than an Ava Gardner, but surely someone had to think I was at least slightly attractive. Well, spoiler alert, I made it through high school without ever being asked out. And you know what? I'm completely fine with it.

I used to wonder if I was too smart to be considered fun by boys, but then there were other smart girls in my school who got asked out all the time. Then I thought that maybe I was too weird. But there were girls who liked the types of things I did and got asked out, too. Maybe it was me? I've since come to the realization that me being single for my entire life has nothing to do with me. I grew up in a town of 1,300 people, not exactly a wide variety of boys my age were available. Even with neighboring towns being more populated than my own, I was one fish in an incredibly small pond.

I'm no longer that sixteen-year-old girl that wanted nothing more than to just be asked to dance at prom. I'm now a woman that knows relationships are more serious than that. I know my value now and know what I want out of a boyfriend. No boy in high school could have offered me what I want and need in a relationship because none of them would have valued me the way I deserved to be. This isn't speaking ill of the boys I went to high school with, this would count for any teenage boy across the nation. I couldn't have been in a healthy relationship in high school, anyways-- because I didn't even know how wonderful I was then. Yes, wonderful.

As a second-year college student, I know that I am smart and kind and funny. I may almost be twenty, and I may still have never been asked out by then . . . But this won't change how I look at myself. Instead, I'll pray that my fuzzy hair and atrocious laugh become just as iconic as Phyllis Diller's. Because I know how valuable I am, and I deserve to be that happy-- with or without a boyfriend.