The biggest mistake I've made in my life was to be too eager to embrace my womanhood. Or, rather, my womanhood as defined by generations of humanity before me. I've always known this, but I'm rediscovering it every day in this new life as a single woman.
NOW I get why they say married men and single women are the happiest.
Adrienne Rich once said, "The most notable fact our culture imprints on women is the sense of our limits. The most important thing one woman can do for another is to illuminate and expand her sense of actual possibilities."
And somewhere along the way, I forgot that anybody can be an awesome wife and mother, whatever that means, but no one can be as awesome a QueenAlpo as I can.
In the last few months of continued introspection, I've come to realize that I did this to myself -- this loss of dreams, this dependency on the idea of a nuclear family structure and a white picket fence, this desperate need to be as happy and plasticky as the people in a Target commercial, this despair that my life didn't measure up to the Good Housekeeping standard.
I've come to realize that most of the personal goals I've pursued in the last several years were ones suggested to me by well-meaning people and adopted as my own. Which means I've been chasing other people's dreams for me.
I've also come to realize that saying "fuck you" is among the most liberating things a person can say.
