I’ve been thinking more about gender roles because I’m still not comfortable with being called a woman. I said to Ian that while I’m not going to make a fuss when someone calls me ‘she’, I prefer to skip pronouns completely. He said he would keep that in mind, which touched me. I wasn’t necessarily saying it because I wanted him to change (we rarely use pronouns for each other, anyway. It’s not something that comes up often when talking directly to each other). I used ‘she’ for myself a few times and did not like it. I did not hate it, either, but it just felt foreign to me. As I’ve said in the past, it’s the one that’s the closest to describing me, but it doesn’t fit. Like bisexual for my sexual identity. It’s close-ish, but not quite right. At my age, though, I just don’t care enough to explore it any further.
It’s the same as how I finally gave up on religion. I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, replete with brimstone and hellfire. There was a heavy emphasis on sex being the worst thing you could do (especially as a girl) until you got married and then it was holy and angels would be singing. When I went to college and had sex for the first time at age 20, it was fantastic. Once it was over, I thought, “This is what’s sending me to hell?” It felt so good and more to the point, did not hurt anyone. Once I realized what shit that was, it was as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. And, on the other hand, there were no angels singing, either. It just felt really good and was something I wanted to do again.
Once that lie was exposed, I left Christianity. Full disclosure: I never truly believed in the Christian God, but I tried really hard. After that, however, I did a 180 and raged at the religion I had been raised in. I was furious that it had lied to me in such a massive way and I refused to listen to anything about it. Around the same time, my mother became even more religious–which was a trial. We were driving somewhere (she was at the wheel) and she would not shut up about Jesus. I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my mouth shut, but it was too much. I snapped that I didn’t give a fuck about her Jesus Christ (and as a general rule, I don’t swear in front of her). She stopped the car and told me to get out. We were about a mile from home so I just walked back, which was for the best.
I never played wedding when I was a little girl. I’ve heard it’s common to dream about it and plan it and enact it with your dolls and whatnot, but I had no interest in that. I hated dolls, anyway; I preferred plushies. I didn’t give a shit about weddings or any of that. I assumed it would come later–the interest, I mean. I also assumed that I had to get married and have children, which filled me with no joy. The day I realized in my early twenties that I did not have to have children was the best day of my life up until that point and it’s not been surpassed by many days since.
I will take a minute to gloat at all the women (specifically women as they were the ones with these reactions) who said I would change my mind, were angry I decided not to have kids, questioned my womanhood, etc. I cannot tell you how happy I am that I did not have children. It’s the best decision of my life and one that I never regretted. That’s so unusual for me because I hate making decisions and always worry that I’ve made the wrong decision. I have never felt that way about not having children. I don’t talk about it much because it’s not any part of my life, but I am positively gleeful that I don’t have children. Best decision I ever made!
I got so much shit for it, including from my mother. For fifteen years, every time she talked to me, she pushed her agenda of getting me pregnant. There was talk about womanly duty and manipulation of emotions. She was on the phone with my brother, loudly talking about how special the bond was between mother and daughter when the daughter was pregnant. Never mind that her mother was in Taiwan when she was pregnant with my brother and me in Minnesota nor that my grandmother didn’t give a shit about either of us because family, womanly duty, blah, blah, blah.
I was relieved to make the decision not to have kids, but I still thought I had to get married. I didn’t want to, but it seemed inevitable. I was dating a man in my late twenties/early thirties and I wrote a short story based on my disdain for marriage and an off-comment by my then-boyfriend after a friend of his got married. He said to me, “Minna! You won’t believe all the stuff my friend got by getting married. We should get married just so I can get a toaster oven!” I looked at him and said that we were grown adults. We could buy ourselves a toaster over if we wanted (we didn’t live together, but that’s neither here nor there). It wasn’t a reason to get married! He was just kidding, but our relationship was doomed in part because he wanted something more traditional than I could give him (though that wasn’t what he thought he wanted when he dumped me).
I think about things way too much. I know this about myself. However, one positive from this is that I know where I am in any given minute, even if it’s a place of uncertainty. My decision to not have kids was an easy one. The decision not to get married was much more complicated. I was a horrible partner for so many reasons. I tried to tell myself that I hated romance and didn’t want to pair up. This was in my twenties. I was lying to myself at that time, however. because I bought into the societal pressures that a woman needed a romantic relationship (preferably with a man, of course) no matter how much I tried to deny it. But marriage itself? I became more and more disillusioned with it. In part, it was because of what I saw with my parents. In another part, it’s because I loved to read advice columns, which only highlighted everything that could go wrong with relationships–especially heterosexual relationships. ESPECIALLY het marriages.
That same boyfriend who asked if we could get married for a toaster oven also said to me that he knew I didn’t want to get married, but would I say yes if he proposed. I thought that was a shitty question to ask and I told him so. But, had he proposed to me, I might have said yes. Which would have been a tragedy so I’m glad I avoided it. In retrospect, I should have realized that he was more traditional than I was, despite his protests to the contrary.
Most recently, I had the realization that I didn’t even want a romantic relationship. There are several reasons for this, including that I am my mother’s daughter in too many ways. I get too wrapped up in the other person, much to the detriment of everything else. I bend too much to the other person and make myself miserable in the process. Also, I don’t like being accountable to someone else. I like doing my own thing whenever I want, only caring about my cat, Shadow.
More to the point, I like spending most of my time by myself. I had a hell of a time with my parents here for three months. I know living with a romantic partner is nothing like living with your parents except for the fact that there is another person constantly there. That haunts me. The idea makes my throat constrict and I start feeling hunted. I went from pretend-wanting to not be in a relationship to truly not wanting to be in one.
I like my space. I like living by myself with just Shadow for company. I wouldn’t mind sex now and again, but not with strangers in the middle of a pandemic. I know that it’s an endemic now and that it’s not going away, but with omicron raging, I’m just going to wait a while. I want sex, yes, but it’s not worth dying for. Or landing back in the hospital. Or even getting sick. That’s just not where I want to be.