Princess Bride

A Poem for the Happy Single Woman

The princess is a bride or is the bride a princess? Makes no difference. Little girls are coached, taught, trained and brainwashed into aspiring for marriage. That is the best thing that can happen to us. I’ve been wedding planning since I was six years old.

Marriage is where you find protection, comfort, security, and, most importantly, love.

Validation. You are never more beautiful than you are on your wedding day. The only thing better than getting married is getting pregnant– while married, of course.

A few years ago, I told my mother I wanted to take a year off and travel the world. She asked me when I was getting married and having children.

“So, is there anyone special in your life? You got a boyfriend?” Thanksgiving questions.

Because I am single, it is automatically assumed that I am unhappy. I am unloved, devoid of love, waiting for love, looking for love, because all single people are lonely, unhappy, and unloved.

I’ve been planning my wedding since I was six years old and believed that I wasn’t really an adult until I was married.

I go to church and the pastor tells the singles in the audience to hold onto their faith because their deliverance from the single life is coming.

Unless I’m a bride I’m not a princess, and I’m not a princess unless I’m a bride.

I am accosted by mothers auctioning off their sons.

Cause she need a man!

I am an angry, sex deprived, nobody unless I’ve got somebody and that somebody is always a man.

Well, I got news for you. I got news for me.

I am somebody. And I don’t mean that in the cliché way people often say.

Being single means nothing beyond the fact that I’m single. It is not how I self-identify. Yes, I am single, but just because I don’t have an other doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to do. And, shame on you for making me feel that way.

As far as I’m concerned, happiness and love have been with me my whole life. Inside here. Buried underneath the planted, soiled, and watered desire to be kept by a man, loved by a man wanted by a man. Poked, waxed, tweezed, stuffed, sucked, flowered, and deflowered by a man.

I am not less than because I do not have a man.

I’ve been planning my wedding since I was six years old, and I’m tired. There are other things I want to do with my life than be married. Marriage, I’m sure, is a wonderful thing, and so is being single.

Marriage is not the source of love. If I wasn’t enough before I got married, how could I possibly be enough after?

I am here. This is where I am. This is where I fly.

Super single, super happy, super loved.