Single and Childless at Forty

            In the Philippines, this kind of status is a red alert for the female species. Most would assume you don't like kids, you don't want to settle down or you want to be a nun, if you're a female, still single and childless in this day at that age. This is a country which was molded and blinded by religion for 333 years so the natural resources of the land and the people would be stripped away from them to enrich and advance their colonizers. 

            Two decades earlier, I was planning my life. I still remember vividly how I thought out my life. I want to have my first child at 23 after I marry my husband, I used to say. I was raised by a conservative family and my parents belong to the 'boomers' generation so that was just one of my rebellious imaginations.  Boomers is the generation where in what the community and the society say about your life should matter.  A broken family, bearing a child out of wedlock, a single parent are some of the textbook cases that are shameful to society back then.  Now, it's widely accepted and sometimes being honoured.  Belonging in the society of my time, I thought I need to be married and have kids at a certain time and I honestly thought that's what I really wanted.  But if you consider my lifestyle then which was two decades earlier today, it wasn't at all aligned to my perceived future. I was dating gay guys out of curiosity, if I can make them stay in Vagina Land. I need to know for myself if homosexuals are even real.   I got challenged.  I guess I took advantage of the thrill of my innocence.  It was worth it!  It was a time where in homosexuals are being cancelled and the cancel culture was still a trend.   If you compare it to our world now where in majority of men turned gay and everyone has the platform to say something about everything, thus, each and everyone's opinion is essential to one's life just because it is posted publicly for everyone to read or watch since it may be in written form as commentaries or it may be a video reaction. I'm not sure which one is better or which should be more acceptable-the former or the latter.  Plus the fact that everyone, even the seniors, are so caught up in the pretences happening in social media.  

            Two decades earlier, I was hanging out with friends day in and day out with overflowing energy, curiosity and passion about real life adventures, experiences, euphoria, bliss, hallucinogens, after effects and the morning after. In the present time, I work in an environment of mostly females. Most females in this group already have husbands and kids or a single mom and it's all they talk about. The single females who are childless can't really talk about kids and marriage because they don't have those. These single females are in their mid or late twenties so I can't really relate to them in terms of experience and preferences considering I'm someone out of the ordinary. Even people within my age bracket won't be able to relate to me easily, what more people younger than me by more than a decade? 

            Now why am I writing about this? I guess I'm using this as an avenue to let my frustrations out. I want to be able to breathe here. My current environment is starting to take its toll on me because it's debilitating my mental stability so pardon me if I have to let this all out here. The energy of my current environment is killing me. There's no way, I'd stay and hang around with people at work who would love to talk about their husbands and kids and their day to day life experiences being a mother, a wife, a daughter-in-law, a sister-in-law, and their experiences with their in laws!  Not to mention their crazy and unforgettable experiences during labor when giving birth!  If only I have a choice!  This is work for crissake! To some people, it's an escape from reality because my reality is chaotic and my work is my only chance of bliss.  But to listen to all woes and rants about a life which I could have had just makes me not to want that kind of life at all.  Thank God and thank you I guess. 

            How did I get here? Is there something wrong with me that I can't seem to fit anywhere and the only comfort I get mostly is the silence in my solitude.

            If you ask me, I'm happy where I am right now. I used to think I want to be married and have children but that was a deception. It was a perception hinged by societal pressure. In my personal experience, getting married and having children could have been the easiest thing to do if only I was up for it. I thought I was to be honest. I guess my natural instincts got the best of me. I was raised by two of the most toxic people I've ever met in my lifetime. I'm not even sure why they're still together.  Maybe because they've been together for so long that they don't know how to live peacefully without each other anymore or they're still bound by their generation's toxic culture and they're more concerned about what other people will say about them if they declare to the world their no longer together. I live with them because they're my parents and this is my home.  If you ask me, I'd rather endure my own parents' toxic nature than any strangers'.  I am happy where I am right now and there's no place I'd rather be.  I have the freedom to do anything I want and at the same time, I take care of them both while they're still here.

                But the current environment I'm in makes me question my status.  I feel out of place and I feel like I'm being consumed by their preferences and the situation of the majority of people I hang out with everyday.  When mothers talk about their babies growing up, being in puberty stage, having boyfriends, turning gay, starting school or finishing school, a hobby or a vocation and everything else a mother can talk about, it's like they make me stand up on my toes until I jump to oblivion.

            I still haven't succeeded in sustaining myself financially, what more having a child of my own? I still have a list of places to go and I still haven't been to Europe. I admit, for years I was blinded by my own deceptive idea that marriage and family is my ultimate goal. I'm glad I'm out of that plethoric deception. Anyone who grew up in that toxic Filipino paradigm would fall prey and get trapped in what the society dictates about your life-that you need to have kids so someone can take care of you when you grow old.  That statement alone is cringe-worthy.  Thanks to the Boomers generation who founded that concept.  It's cringe-worthy how Filipinos would label you an 'old maid' if you don't get in the bandwagon.  Imagine, a Filipina, single mother of two toddlers, more than a decade my junior did not even ask me about my preferences but told me that I should be an old maid.  She even used her local dialect to give emphasis to the term "old maid," and even attempted to involve another married mother familiar with the same local dialect, who remained silent to her tasteless remark.  Maybe she thought it was for a more humorous effect to her knowledge or ignorance to say the least. For a minute, I got confused if I'd be offended or relieved that I'm not in her shoe.  But I don't want to see her cry so I just removed that dirt off my shoulder with class.  Talk about ethics.  It's not that I'm on my moral high horse but I wasn't the one judging nor the one who slatted out a ridiculous comment towards another at that moment.  True story.

             I can't begin to describe how valuable my freedom is metaphorically and figuratively speaking. I'm saying this now because I know how unbearable getting burned by your own family is. It can kill you like how it killed me. Can you even imagine your own bloodline having all the passion in this world to bleed you dry and that's not even enough? It's like they can't believe you survived and was given a second chance of life so they just imagined you're dead even if you're still alive. You probably assumed it's only a figment of my imagination, right? Because you can't even imagine it is possible. Well, I guess that's how life burns you and we continuously fight our own battles. Now, I can't be looking for love and romance if I'm like a sprained limper seeking for refuge and redemption. 

               I'm single and childless at forty and it's true what they say. Life starts at forty, indeed!  Though, I never talk about all the beautiful things, as a single woman, would be capable to do (and/or already did) and the myriad of discoveries I get from the male species, despite the fact that I'm craving for some sort of balance in this linear environment we have, I know for a fact that my inputs would help foster love, relationships, marriage and family.  I've had my fair share of life experiences with beautiful men and all the beautiful things they are capable to give you.  They certainly gave me and would still be able to give me the time of my life again and again.  I know how the females in this environment would love to hear them because it's the closest to 'exhilarating' they can ever get.  I don't even think most of them know how a multiple orgasm feels like because household chores and the welfare of their children is more important.  That's the saddest reality in this country, noh?  You may never hear me talk about my own exciting life experiences because I know that there's a more appropriate place and time to talk about them, but please cut me some slack and keep your marital and domestic issues at home.  Blabbering about it at work only makes you look (insert appropriate euphemism).