Sometimes I think I live in the only place in the world where two things are impossible. First, since I live within twenty miles of home, it is impossible for me to go anywhere without running into anyone I know from my childhood. For crying out loud, I run into my professors (from Weber, for goodness sake!) at the downtown Smith's Marketplace. I can go all the way out to Hale Centre Theater in West Valley . . . and run into three people I know from high school and at least two couples who were my Sunday School teachers. I'm not kidding.
Second, it's impossible for most of my married friends and my parents' friends and basically any married people I know not to look on me without a certain degree of pity when they realize I'm fast approaching my 24th birthday and I'm (wipe away a tear) still single. For those marrieds who love me, it's a puzzlement and a tragedy. I'm not terrible looking, they reason, and I'm smart. I have no obvious defects and I get along with 95% of the people I meet.
Some of them don't even realize they have that pity look and claim they loved their single days. While I don't doubt it, there is always an an unspoken "but" lurking at the end of the sentence--". . . but marriage is so much better."
Most single women I meet believe their single-ness is a cause for woe. Mourning. Bitterness. You name it. I, on the other hand, enjoy being single. It involves a measure of independence that marriage doesn't. (After all, there are two people in a marriage.) Right now, I don't have to report to anybody. I don't have to cook for anybody else if I don't want to. My money is spent or saved exclusively for me. In short, I get to be selfish and self-centered in a lot of acceptable ways because I'm single.
And back to the independence factor: I just realized the other day that I don't really have to take anyone else into consideration when I figure out where to go to grad school. (Provided any of the schools accept me, that is) And thought I don't have to, I think my mom would be mad if I didn't take my parents--particularly her--into consideration. Scratch "think," I know my mom would be mad.
Also, I could go on vacation any time I wanted. I have income from a full-time job, days of paid leave, an ability to afford a ticket to anywhere in the United States, and a little bit of vacation money to blow on such things as vacation food and silly souvenirs.
Right now, I can do anything I want. It's an exhilarating feeling. I'm not pitiable--not pitiable at all.
2 comments:
Amen to all of that. And no one else has to be disturbed by the, as my roommate put it this morning, "ridiculous hours [I] keep."
There's that odd "but," at the end of the sentence. Yet, from what my sisters have spoken to me about many times, "marriage has its limits". I value my independence as well, and I don't take it very kindly when people tell me that somehow marriage is the answer to all of life's problems. Because it's not. I know. From, Kelley
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