stepford stuff

I was looking through my old high school memory book. Where it asked about the life you’ll live and the things you’ll have in 10 years’ time. The first question was “Married?”. The first answer: “Not on your life. Or mine.”

My future was never made of man. I was on the softer side of 30 before I even entertained the idea of marriage and even then it was just a possibility. Something to do in my forties. Maybe. When I had tried everything and tried it again.

I had a notion that men held you back. Either from their own dead weight or from an enforced stepford-style of wifery. I couldn’t help it. It was what I knew.

Women who cooked and cleaned because their men said they should. Aunts who worked three jobs to support husbands who wouldn’t support themselves. And a woman I love dearly, who went without a phone or a friend because the man she called Dear liked to be in control that way.

I wanted more. More than more. I wanted it all. And was convinced the only way to have it, was to go without. ‘Why waste time on a man’, I use to say, ‘when you can waste it on everything else?’

But the thing is – and I guess we all have to come to this, one way or another – not all men are like our fathers. My mother found out the hard way. I found out the easy way. And was pleasantly surprised.