Single and Childless
A married friend said to me this week that I'm still free enough to do anything. To just pick up and move. And my immediate feeling was, "I don't feel very free."
I don't know when that happened, that feeling. I never felt that kind of a response before.
My life since I turned 18 has been a tribute to the "pick up and move" mentality. And yes, it's great. And yes, you feel free when you're doing it. But then you have to stop somewhere, and build. Until you break it all down and start over and stop and build and break it down and start over and stop and...
I don't know how to stop this cycle, I don't think. I've got wanderlust in my blood. My brain and body always yearn for forward motion. And yet, here I am, as of last month living for the longest I've lived in any one place since I was old enough to vote. And I don't even LIKE it here. Well, not entirely. But it feels like something has; I don't know...broken down. I feel like a car on blocks, my streamlined curves still aching for what it felt like to be racing down the highway. And no amount of mechanical tinkering seems to be able to expose exactly WHAT is keeping me from getting up and running again.
I don't know where I'm going, where I'm supposed to go, or why to go there.
I also hate that I'm just SITTING here, being fucking sensible. It's so BORING. I want to move. I want to GO. I want to BE THERE.
But then, this week, I can't stop thinking about the end years of my life. It keeps gnawing at me. When I'm old and getting ready to die, will I be lying in my bed feeling my life was full of adventure and new experiences; a scintillating circus of memories? Or will I mostly just be alone and ill, without any emotional/physical support because I never stayed anywhere long enough or cared about anyone long enough to settle down, marry, and/or have kids--and without any money because I never accrued enough savings, having also never settled down long enough to accrue sensible things like property, investments, savings, retirement funds.
This week for some reason has been full of stories of children caring for their aging and incapacitated or financially strapped parents. Everywhere I turn, there's another story. And I have to ask myself, as good as freedom feels, will it pay off? Who will look out for me when I become too frail to take care of myself? Who will help me if I run out of retirement money, social security disappears, and I have no immediate descendants who would take me in? What happens to those people for whom this is the case?
As good as freedom feels, will it pay off?
I hate this question. I want the answer to be that freedom of spirit is ALWAYS preferable to a compromise that ensures a gilded cage of at best monotonous routine and at worst plain old misery. I hate how married people often treat the "single and childless" as if they are cursed; or something to be pitied. I hate seeing how so many people I know have settled for a certain kind of life they're not even happy in, just because it provides a certain kind of security they're unwilling to give up. It makes my blood boil. And yet, there's the question.
I talked to another married friend of mine the other day, and told her I couldn't stop thinking about this question. She said, "You know, that never even crosses my mind. I never even thought to worry about that." I pointed out she was married in her 20s, has a husband who rakes in the dough, and has two kids, so despite her pointing out that you never CAN know what will happen, and a husband and kids NOW is no guarantee of support later, she probably doesn't think about the question because she on some subconscious level she thinks of her spouse and children as an old-age security blanket. She thought that might be true, and pointed out that she often worries what would happen if her spouse died, and how would she manage to raise her kids.
Well, I said to her, there's something I never even think to worry about.
So I guess it's all a trade off. But you see single people raising kids all the time. You don't see what happens to the very old, single, childless people. Where do they go?
Assuming I never become wealthy, how am I going to weather old age alone?
And when can I just pick up and move and just stop thinking about this?
Note before commenting: I'm not saying all marriage is a "gilded cage," or that you can't feel or be free if you're married. I think it's quite possible to be married and feel freedom of spirit...if the marriage is good. I'm merely riffing on the sometimes perception that single people are "free" and without worries. And the perception on the other hand that they are stupid and misguided for being so. And then also, let's face it, there ARE a lot of marriages and families out there that don't meet the ideal, and that do feel like the opposite of freedom.