23 going on 35

There is a fear in me of becoming one of those single, 35 years old women who are, weird enough, being singled out just because they are over thirty, single and most often do better on the career than the love department.

It is mainly due to the fact that my surroundings told me I am in the right age to be in a serious relationship and on the way to marriage, when I am in fact, fearing the actual word of “marriage” itself, let alone the meaning of it.

What bothers me a lot lately is that I’m starting to think that perhaps I should be worried about marriage. It bugs me so much because knowing I’m such a complicated, neurotic person it will probably be hard for me to get hitched and force someone to spend the rest of his life with me.

But the prospect of being married lurches back into my mind and I shudder at the thought of marrying an arsehole who wants me to double duty as a doormat. The thing about marriage is, it is never quite as easy as it sounds and I have heard and seen one too many traumatic experiences about marriage that the thought of it seems so gloomy and disappointing I’d rather spend my life with a cable TV and other electronical beings that are thankfully always available and keep on improving from time to time.

Weird enough, I start to think that whether being a woman is all there is to it. Just because we have wombs and can reproduce, is it really our destiny to do so or can we actually be more than that? Can a woman ever be more than just a child bearer or are we supposed to go back to our roots and be the gatherers that we were – thousands of years ago?

In a patriarchal country such as Indonesia, it is still unusual for women to be independent and pursuing their careers as a priority and ignore the ticking sound of their biological clock – as if they are denying what is suppose to be their destinies in lives.

I feel like I am going to be one of those oddly singled out over thirty women that will receive sniggers and the raised eyebrows by the wedded and the elderly, just because I choose career over marriage. The battle has not even begun but the comments are already spitting out and accumulating like poisonous gas around me.

Whenever I say that I don’t care about getting married, people gasp as if I have offended them personally. They think that something’s definitely wrong with me – just because I want more than just being a housewife.

Maybe I will end up being a spinster, or maybe I won’t. But there’s something extraordinary and bigger than life out there and I’m going to find it, no matter what it takes.