I have been fortunate to receive a lot of love. My family loves me deeply and fiercely. My parents have blessed me with a village who has made me hangover meals, tailored prom dresses, given me places to sleep but I often feel like that love is temporary. This is the love that prepares me for my husband. This is the love that teaches me how to be someone’s companion.
For some reason, I have thought the love of a partner, specifically a man will be the love that doesn’t leave me. I have no proof of this. My parents are separated and I have seen more failed marriages than forever ones. I am a proud womanist who believes that a woman’s happiness should not rely on romantic partnership with a man yet I still think maybe just maybe if I find a man who loves me enough, he’ll stay forever. Maybe if a man chooses me and pursues me it’ll feel this deep fear of neglect
That’s what it is. It’s the idea that my friends will leave me when their boyfriends become husbands and they become parents. I will continue to love them with everything and they will think “well I have a husband and babies so I can’t love you as much as me as before.”
Friends assure me that this will never happen, but they can’t control it. I would never ask them to.
I have excluded myself from that possibility. There is no way I will be the friend who finds love because I have no model for that. My cousin got married last year at 22 and she’s going to be a mom in March. Her wedding was beautiful. I picked up poop that might have been in her path as she walked down the aisle. All my friends got boyfriends around the same time (myself included) and mine dumped me 3 weeks later, only to keep me emotionally attached for 6 more months.
At 22, I am an infant in this world. I could easily have 70 more years of life. Yet, when my mom was my age, she was married and pregnant with me. My aunts all were dating their future husbands and my grandmother was married and pregnant with my father.
I am in uncharted territory.