A couple of weeks ago, at the shockingly mature age of 27, I found myself single once again. Needless to say, the experience left me with a glittering party-pack of emotions, the most surprising of which was blind, flailing anger.

Frustrations; I had them by the dozen, and I hardly knew who’s bollocks I wanted to staple-gun first. Society’s, for making me feel like a used up, shelf mouldering spinster? My brother’s, for lecturing me about how to be a good feminist? My parents’, for having so many truly detailed opinions about literally everything, while flaunting their perfect married-at-21-permanent-job-at-22-house-purchased-for-$30,000 existence in my face? Naturally, (because we’re all masochists at heart aren’t we?) I gave myself the belting.

“It’s your own stupid fault for having such ridiculous standards,” I lectured, “and now look what you’ve done. Statistically speaking, you fall in love once every 6 years; add on a year of courtship, 6 months at the least to arrange the wedding, 2 years to get to know yourselves as a couple, and you wont be having kids until you’re 37. That’s basically past fun-time on the biological clock, so well done genius, you’re never having babies.”

Mid rant, this complete insanity was (thankfully) checked by a sudden and glorious epiphany; I am the exact same age as Charlotte Lucas was when she married Mr Collins. I am the same age now as she was when she agreed to spend the rest of her days with an insufferable prat, purely because matrimony ‘was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune’. And as I walked around my piquantly vacant 3 bedroom rental — mostly naked because of the heat, and enjoying honey-toast-with-a-side-of-sav-blanc for dinner because I can — I became overwhelmed with gratitude to have been born in 1987.

“Right-o then, Spinsterhood” I told the empty living room at large. “You can just take your guilt riddled overtones, shove them up your arse, and let the patriarchy be damned.”

I am young, I am single, and I have my independence.

Let the adventures begin.*