Look —I know that the important things in life are my friends, my family, and my job. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still things that are hard about being single. It’s so frustrating when my couple friends invite me out to drinks and I wind up being the third, or even the fifth wheel. Family members always ask when I’m going to bring home a partner. But the hardest thing by far, though, is how couples around me keep trying to hunt me for sport in broad daylight.

I know it’s cliché to be that girl, always complaining about being partner-less, but there still is a very real stigma surrounding the single life. I always have to worry if I’ll look weird or desperate showing up to parties alone — because they always turn out to be held at remote hunting lodges deep in the Adirondacks and a good fifty miles from civilization and I’m apparently considered “big game”. Ugh, being single is the worst!

My friends in relationships are always trying to fix me up with other single people without any regards for personality type. Like, the other day, my good friend fixed me up with her coworker Greg in an “after-work-drinks” situation. Not only did we not have anything in common, but halfway through the evening the bartender called his girlfriend up to the bar, took out a hunting rifle, put on a safari hat, and said that Greg and I would have a fifteen minute head-start before they started hunting for us in the woods. Dating in this city can be this so bleak.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good run in the park or a vigorous SoulCycle class — but I gotta say, when I hear those bugles sound and the huntsman’s call of “TALLY-HO!” I can’t help but roll my eyes. It’s a seriously outdated term, for one, and two, can you not send a pack of foxes chasing after me afterward? It’s rude and really shows how insensitive couples can be toward their single friends.

For now, I don’t need to focus on being a relationship right now; I just need to learn how to love myself, and good things will come naturally from that. But seriously it’s so aggravating to wake up in the middle of the night to see Shauna and Reggie (who’ve been dating since college) measuring my head to see what size mounting plaque they should order for my decapitated head. Like, yes, I would look beautiful adorning the walls of your magnificent hunting lodge, but maybe I’m just trying to focus on my career right now, okay?

And yes, I’ll admit in those cold winter months in my frigid apartment sometimes I do long for the warmth and reassurance of another human body next to me — but I also would like to stop waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of beagles howling their terrifying, blood-curdling howls. Like, I GET IT. YOU’RE HUNTING ME. Maybe just let me live for once??