It is that time of year again – the sporadic snowfall peppers the season with rosy cheeks and steaming mugs of hot chocolate and a decadent Columbian roast. College students everywhere cram for their final exams, leaving human-shaped dents in library chairs and lumpy twin mattresses. Once the last scrawl of an English essay touches the infamous blue book, the joyful car ride home begins; a mix of America’s Top 40 and Christmas carols fill the cabin, and the now winter foliage begs welcome into the next month of lounging and eating way too many holiday cookies. You know, the lonely girl holiday soiree for one.

That’s the thing about the holidays: it seems as if everyone and their mother has someone special to share those cookies with. I on the other hand, find myself eating ten by myself, which only verifies the fact that regular gym sessions are definitely in the books for the next few weeks. And it’s not just cookies. As soon as I enter my hometown, eating habits go out the window and even the most common unappetizing groupings seem delicious. Fact: potato chips, yogurt, and a pink popsicle are not the three-course meal I was hoping to enjoy.

All the Hallmark movies have poisoned me. Is it possible to get film poisoning from watching too many trope-filled romantic comedies with your heart open? I guess I can’t help it because I’m an English major who first fell in love with the Victorian period and poetry inspired by Romanticism. If Thomas Hardy were alive today and had somehow lost his itch for infidelity, he’d be the perfect man. However, he’s dead, and it seems, so is my own love life or lack thereof.

Is it just me, or does any other girl in her twenties only attract attention from forty-year old men, teen boys, and men her own age just looking to scratch an itch of their own? It seems that no one anymore is interested in intelligent conversation and meeting in person. The world has been overrun by the Internet and apps that require as little verbal face-to-face interaction as possible. There is also the small fraction of men in their twenties who take chivalry too far. For example, holding the door open for a girl when she is about a city block away from the entrance to a building. Now I’m forced to hop, skip, and jump to the entrance on the icy sidewalk so that the man is not standing there too long in the cold. It is an uncomfortable interaction that I would very much like to avoid.

So, as to the point of this post, the holidays were designed for couples. Having someone by my side would have prevented the awkward door-holding and the extra couple pounds from Christmas cookies and strange eating habits. Plus, it would be nice for a change to be the sibling that gets to take someone on a family trip or go on dates. Even after all the movies, my hope is still intact, because this season is still about surprises. Normally, my pessimism rules my existence, but I am determined to let what little optimism I can find at the bottom of my morning coffee spill out a bit this year. Maybe I’ll be alone again for New Years, but at least I can legally drink the loneliness away … briefly, of course.