The Single Girls Sacrifice

I'm secure enough in my own flightiness that I can acknowledge that some things just seem to go over my head. In my whimsical and not-so-fancy free state I can almost feel one of those things I perpetually "don't get" soaring past me, but this time, I reach up like an outfielder during a World Series game who dreams of being "that" guy, the one that makes the pennant winning catch. And I reach, and I stretch and grab that sucker inches from my curly mop and think to myself: I just won the goddamn World-fuckin'-Series!

So, what is it that I've caught, you may ask? It's simple, really, I've finally caught on to the idea that I am a living The Single Girls Sacrifice. It makes sense, which I immediately realize is the reason it has taken me so long to get it (catching speeding baseballs from the air has never been my forte). Pre-catch, I was reveling in the combo world of hope and cynicism. I didn't think there was more than that rock (hope) and that hard place (cynicism). By looking at those two emotions as the only ones I was allowed to feel I relented, I gave in to the idea that there was no more left to my dating life than the constant betrayal of hope and the persistent reaffirmations of cynicism. My two best emotions, now, lie side by side in a heap of multiple gun shots to the chest (umm, I might have got a little carried away with disposing of them....) and I am renewed. Wait, let me check again...ah, nope, not renewed just stuck in a new battle. Lovely.

The Single Girls Sacrifice. It seems to me that I have sacrificed meeting a half-way decent man with which I could have a semi-functioning relationship in order to have all the other things that are in my life. I have great friends, a wonderful family, an education that far exceeds many, and I've got a life that doesn't seem so shabby when I'm faced with all my other friends relationship woes (aka hellish nightmares). In my efforts to live a full life without a man I have created a life that will not give me one. Am I willing to give up what I do have for what I can't seem to stop wanting? Something that may not be what I've imagined it to be (the perils of Hollywood)? Will I chance my family, friends, lifestyle, intelligence, independence, mind, body, soul and spirit for a....man?

I'm straddling, people. The new age modern chick in me says "die old misogynistic ideas that a woman is never fulfilled unless she has a man" and the circa 1845 23-year old spinster in me says "Oh God, just marry the guy who has the pez dispenser collection! Do it now!" The rock is now being single, and the hard place is being married. Fucked from both ends, and it ain't pretty!

The Single Girls Sacrifice. The Modern Woman's Dilemma. Won't somebody please think of the women!? As I stare at the two very new notches in my rejection belt courtesy of two more men who have deemed me unworthy, I wonder, in great hope, if somebody will think of the women. The intelligent, attractive, accomplished, and independent women. It seems to me that we never think of ourselves, and men certainly never do.

God, I hate the feminist movement sometimes. At this very moment, I could be living in all sorts of suburban glory, birthing little rugrats and ironing my husband's shirt in a wonderful hoop skirt looking forward to making that pot roast and entertaining the neighbors over a home baked apple pie (from scratch of course). Suburban misogyny....take me away.