Sorry, I Don’t Have Your Problems

I Ain’t Married, I Got No Dog, I Got No Kids, I Got No Man, I’ve Never Known Such Peace

Self Portrait: Photographer, Amy Palmer

I have no children.

I do not have a partner.

I do not have a husband.

I do not have a dog.

I do not want these things in my life, because with them come responsibilities, expectations, and problems, that I do not currently have.

Men around the world are freaking out at the thought that a person like me is already rejecting them without even so much as an invitation, but that’s precisely what I am doing.

Now here’s why.

I spent my whole life being abused. 35 years of it, and I am only 41 years old now.

That means for the last six years, I have been at peace knowing that I am safe, and protected, simply because I do not have men in my life.

I know three good male friends in my real non-digital life, and they are absolutely wonderful, but I am not intimate with any of them and I think therein lies the difference.

When a person becomes intimate with another — especially when the “other” is a man, the complications that come with how we were both raised, and the expectations we both carry going forward are vastly different than when you are on your own.

As my own individual person if I want to go out to a movie I can, if I want to “Netflix and chill” with myself, I can do that too, if I have a headache I don’t have to make excuses I can just go the fuck to bed.

I never feel the need to ask permission or clear my time with anyone else, I never feel the need to put out sex on days when I am not feeling my best.

Sure the downside is I don’t have someone to take care of me when I am down but I’ve never had that, so am I missing something I’ve never known?

I’m not saying that i’ll never have a partner, but what I am saying is that the peace I can cultivate today is the peace I am not willing to give up for just anyone in the world.

I don’t have a partner to lean on, but what I do have is a great circle of friends who give me the space to be myself and help me celebrate when the good things happen. For now at least, that’s enough.

Not every woman wants to experience the same trauma their mothers went through. Some of us see the challenges of our mothers, as keys to locks on doors we didn’t know were closed to us, until we started to think about what it means…to get married and have children.

It’s romantic, the notion of falling in love and getting married to one person and living with them forever. It’s beautiful to think of folks who fall in love, have children, and stay in love until the day they die.

But not all of us get that experience, for a variety of reasons, but it seems to me, that most women who are my age without children are at the very slightest a little bit relieved.

Not because they don’t want to have children, or even because they’ve given up the idea of having kids, but because they’ve seen the challenges that come with children and some of us realize that we've dodged a bullet.

And again, not because we don’t love kids, or because we don’t want kids, but because sometimes given the opportunity to have children with certain people, we know that the results would not have been good for anyone involved.

I can honestly say that although I am still grieving over the loss of a miscarried child, I know that had I given birth, my life would be much, much harder, now and I don’t know that that child, would have been raised in the best environment given my mental health and the relationship I was in at the time.

There are many valid reasons why many of us do not have children, but the one thing that we shouldn’t have to feel if we do not go down that road is guilt.

Women especially those of us who are women who cannot give birth — not all of us but some of us — feel a certain type of way about the fact that we physically can’t give birth. It’s almost — for me at least — like a betrayal of nature, but I know that this way of thinking comes from the patriarchal conditioning I grew up with.

Changing that conditioning and knowing that just because I can’t give birth, doesn’t make me less of a woman is taking a lot more work than I thought it would, because the fact that I can’t give birth without possible death due to health issues, makes “me” feel, like less of a woman.

This isn’t because I want to feel this way, this is because my whole life I’ve had men tell me the only reason I exist, is to be their sex toy and eventually the mother of their future victims.

I spent a lot of years believing that shit, and so now that I realize it’s not true, I have to keep reminding myself that my purpose is not wrapped up in my vagina, no matter how many men think so.

My purpose comes from my soul, from deep within the heart of the universe in a place most humans have long forgotten exists. I am stronger than the conditioning that I grew up with, but like many people on the mental health spectrum, I am learning as I go.

I am sharing that journey so it looks like I am more healed than I am, but I am still only scratching the surface of mental health, just like many of you.

All I know is that I am not going to force myself to be intimate with someone I don’t care for or am not ready for, just so I can play “Catch up” to all my friends.

My beautiful darling, my life has not your problems…be jealous, be happy, just don’t expect me to follow your journey because my single life makes you uncomfortable.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl