When I was in college I had a teacher; she was ancient. She was teaching databases and she was probably there when they were invented because her knowledge of data relationships and normalization was extensive. My colleagues used to criticize her for her childish voice, for how she dressed, for how she taught. The poor woman could do nothing right apparently, just because she never married, she was a spinster. It’s so strange how people assume behavior from basically … nothing.
I also had another teacher that never married, a man. Men spinsters that manage to be functional adults are automatically labeled as drunken geniuses, that dedicated their lives to their passions and that is why their personal lives never happened. But old women that never married, they are obviously crazy-sour man-hater good for nothing bitches.
Ha ha, see what I did there? I just underlined a sexist double standard.
Clearly, the two cases are limited to the Romanian culture. Not sure what preconceptions other cultures have about spinsters. Another thing that is common in Romania is to mostly isolate people that skip the marriage step. Spinsters are viewed as misfits and sometimes a danger to existing marriages. Because in our culture it is considered “not normal” to be single and obviously if you tell people you’ve chosen and accepted solitude, you must be actually lying and the only reason you try to stay close to people that are married is so you can steal somebody’s husband or wife. Isolating and casting out people that end up alone is a social phenomenon. I’m not even sure if the root of how we view single people has a religious or a political reason. Because church and political regimes have at least one thing in common: they love the traditional family, the one made by one man and one woman, the fundamental cell of any society, that leads to the creation of new people, believers for the church and taxpayers for the state. This is quite a big discussion, but the core idea is that being single after a certain age is bad and everything while growing up, teaches you that the worst thing to be as an adult is … alone.
Seriously, my parents biggest fear was that I and my sister will never marry because we were ugly and poor and we would become a burden for them. Since I was a child I remember my mother teaching me how to do everything around the house, because those were the skills a good wife had to have. And their fear transmitted to me too, because I am a little abashed looking back at my romantic history, because I am pretty sure, most of my decisions in my relationships were caused by that fear. And no, they were not good decisions.
Anyway, more than four years ago, a series of unfortunate events and bad decisions (not all mine) left me for the first time in my life in the state of being single after a really bad and brusque breakup. I’ve had moments when I blamed myself, I’ve had moments when I blamed him. When you are in pain, blame is like a ball in an out of control pinball machine. No matter where you throw the damn ball it will always hit something until it finds the path out. Truth is we were not compatible, not unless both being extraordinarily stubborn counts. We would have hurt each other way worse if it hadn’t ended when it did and I am forever grateful to the lover after me.
And this is how my long walk on the lonely road began.
Honestly, I’ve never expected for me to be single for so long. But then again, I’ve never really tried that hard not to be. I’ve written books, I’ve traveled and I’ve filled all my free time with things I’ve wanted to do for so long, that there was not much time left to … date. But that’s not important right now.
What I want to tell you is that the lady teacher that I previously mentioned, was always nice to me. She had this childlike voice and never avoided answering a question, even if the answer was “I don’t know”. She had never been anything else than sweet and kind. By comparison, the male teacher was quite bitter and cynical. So, really, if I end up like her it’s not a bad thing.
The loner life fits me for the moment. It has fit me for the last four years. I’ve embraced solitude as a normality and I don’t really care if me being single hurts the church or the economy. I did not choose this, but I’ll be damned if I let it make me bitter, sour or cynical.
Some people have to walk alone. And that is something to admire not chastise and ridicule.
