Christmas Escort for Hire?
It’s getting to the point where I feel that hiring a man to escort me to my family’s Christmas might be the route to take. I’m tired of being the single cousin. I’m tired of never having a date. I’m tired of not being able to burden everyone with gift-buying for my three illegitimate and annoying children. I’m tired of being the “loser” in the family.
No one sees that I am only twenty-one at Christmas. No one sees that I am working full time to live on my own and also putting myself through school. No one sees that I have never borrowed money from my parents, or anyone for that matter, and that I pay my own bills out of my own pocket. All they see is that my cousin has children, and therefore has lived up to her life’s expectations of creating grandchildren and great-grandchildren for everyone to fuss over.
I am not exaggerating in the slightest about my family bugging me about settling down and having kids for them to preen. My mother is the absolute worst proponent of this vile mental terrorism. For instance, take what happened last weekend during dinner with my mother at Denny’s. This is not an isolated incident, and variations of it happen every time I am near my mother.
My mother spies an older woman in the restaurant with a little baby and sighs wistfully, watching the possible grandmother care for her crying grandbaby in the bustling restaurant.
“Too bad I’ll never get to do that,” she mumbles, sipping her ice water and nibbling at her buttered pancakes.
“What does that mean?” I ask, offended and on the defense. Does she think I’m incapable of a relationship with a man to make babies? Does she think I’m incapable of caring for babies? Does she think I’m unable to attract a man to create babies with? What does she think?
My mother shoots back a snarky, “Well where am I supposed to get grandbabies from?”
To which I retort, with a little hysteria and hurt and my voice, “I don’t know, my womb?”
The waitress of course swooped in on the end of that sentence to ask, “More water?” with questions and curiosity in her eyes, causing the conversation to stop and my mind to fester with what on Earth my mother meant with her demeaning statements.
It always gets worse around Christmastime, it seems, when everyone else in the family gets to flaunt their settled-down status. Everyone is married and has had children. (Except for my younger brother of course, but I consider him excused since he is only nineteen and hasn’t moved out of mom’s house yet. And boys don’t have the pressures that girls do to settle down and procreate. But that’s another topic for another entry.)
I’m already seen as a spinster at twenty-one years old. I’m deathly jealous of my friends with boyfriends. I don’t necessarily like their boyfriends, that’s not why I’m jealous, but I’m jealous that their families see them as having potential and being worth something besides ridicule, year after year after long and lonely year. Don’t they think I want romance in my life? Of course I do, I’m a woman. But I also feel strong and independent living and making my life on my own. I don’t need the crutch of a man, so why does my family feel that need for me and try to shove it down my throat along with eggnog and cookies at Christmastime?
Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m one of those people who will live and die alone. Will that make me less of a person, though? I feel like that’s what people think. I mean, I’m the one in the office that none of the guys hit on or flirt with. Even the guys who flirt with every girl and try to sleep with every girl don’t even glance at me, and I’m never bothered with it because none of them are what I’m looking for in a man anyway. But I guess maybe it does bother me and maybe it would be nice to be seen as an object of desire by someone, anyone, even the horn dogs who would sleep with anything that moves.
I just don’t know. One minute I feel proud and strong for being a single woman making it on my own. The next minute I’m crying myself to sleep because the apartment is so quiet and I fear it always will be.
I need a pet cat. But even a cat probably wouldn't like me and would only use me as an ear-scratcher and food-giver and poop-cleaner only because he has no other choice but to accept me as his provider.
Ugh.
No one sees that I am only twenty-one at Christmas. No one sees that I am working full time to live on my own and also putting myself through school. No one sees that I have never borrowed money from my parents, or anyone for that matter, and that I pay my own bills out of my own pocket. All they see is that my cousin has children, and therefore has lived up to her life’s expectations of creating grandchildren and great-grandchildren for everyone to fuss over.
I am not exaggerating in the slightest about my family bugging me about settling down and having kids for them to preen. My mother is the absolute worst proponent of this vile mental terrorism. For instance, take what happened last weekend during dinner with my mother at Denny’s. This is not an isolated incident, and variations of it happen every time I am near my mother.
My mother spies an older woman in the restaurant with a little baby and sighs wistfully, watching the possible grandmother care for her crying grandbaby in the bustling restaurant.
“Too bad I’ll never get to do that,” she mumbles, sipping her ice water and nibbling at her buttered pancakes.
“What does that mean?” I ask, offended and on the defense. Does she think I’m incapable of a relationship with a man to make babies? Does she think I’m incapable of caring for babies? Does she think I’m unable to attract a man to create babies with? What does she think?
My mother shoots back a snarky, “Well where am I supposed to get grandbabies from?”
To which I retort, with a little hysteria and hurt and my voice, “I don’t know, my womb?”
The waitress of course swooped in on the end of that sentence to ask, “More water?” with questions and curiosity in her eyes, causing the conversation to stop and my mind to fester with what on Earth my mother meant with her demeaning statements.
It always gets worse around Christmastime, it seems, when everyone else in the family gets to flaunt their settled-down status. Everyone is married and has had children. (Except for my younger brother of course, but I consider him excused since he is only nineteen and hasn’t moved out of mom’s house yet. And boys don’t have the pressures that girls do to settle down and procreate. But that’s another topic for another entry.)
I’m already seen as a spinster at twenty-one years old. I’m deathly jealous of my friends with boyfriends. I don’t necessarily like their boyfriends, that’s not why I’m jealous, but I’m jealous that their families see them as having potential and being worth something besides ridicule, year after year after long and lonely year. Don’t they think I want romance in my life? Of course I do, I’m a woman. But I also feel strong and independent living and making my life on my own. I don’t need the crutch of a man, so why does my family feel that need for me and try to shove it down my throat along with eggnog and cookies at Christmastime?
Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m one of those people who will live and die alone. Will that make me less of a person, though? I feel like that’s what people think. I mean, I’m the one in the office that none of the guys hit on or flirt with. Even the guys who flirt with every girl and try to sleep with every girl don’t even glance at me, and I’m never bothered with it because none of them are what I’m looking for in a man anyway. But I guess maybe it does bother me and maybe it would be nice to be seen as an object of desire by someone, anyone, even the horn dogs who would sleep with anything that moves.
I just don’t know. One minute I feel proud and strong for being a single woman making it on my own. The next minute I’m crying myself to sleep because the apartment is so quiet and I fear it always will be.
I need a pet cat. But even a cat probably wouldn't like me and would only use me as an ear-scratcher and food-giver and poop-cleaner only because he has no other choice but to accept me as his provider.
Ugh.